If you’ve done much reading online regarding personality tests, you may have run across a testing company called Truity. This article is going to explore Truity in detail, and offer you our honest and comprehensive view on their personality and career testing services. We will take a look at what they offer, how they offer it and, most importantly, whether what they offer is really worth it.
Truity Psychometrics develop and publish online personality and career tests. Founded in 2012, Truity are on a mission to make high-quality psychometric tests more accessible – to both individuals and organizations. Through the power of research and knowledge, Truity want to help every single one of us find our ‘true selves’.
What types of personality tests does Truity offer?
Truity offers a wide range of personality and career tests based on a number of different models, and each with a slightly different purpose or objective behind them. Each of these tests aim to help us unlock the power of our true-selves. These test are designed to help us understand ourselves a little better, whether that be at home, at work or in our relationships. Each of the tests offered at Truity are designed to be user-friendly, as well as accurate.
PERSONALITY TESTS:
- Typefinder Personality Test: Take the Test | Read our Review
- Enneagram Personality Test: Take the Test | Read our Review
- Big 5 Personality Test: Take the Test | Read our Review
- DISC Personality Assessment: Take the Test | Read our Review
CAREER TESTS:
- Holland Code Career Test: Take the Test | Read our Review
- Typefinder for Career Planning: Take the Test | (review in process…)
- Typefinder for the Workplace: Take the Test | (review in process…)
- Enneagram for Business: Take the Test | (review in process…)
- Career Personality Profiler: Take the Test | (review in process…)
Who is behind Truity’s mission?
Truity was founded by Molly Owens in 2012, who has and a a Masters degree in counseling psychology and copious amounts of experience in the personality assessment industry.
Whilst she was working at PersonalityDesk, a consultancy firm that she founded, Molly realized that there was one huge problem with the world of personality testing: there was a huge empty gap between the rigorous, expensive tests and the gimmicky free tests.
Molly couldn’t find cost-effective solutions for her clients. If they were willing to pay a lot of money then they could (with some difficulty) get access to valid and reliable personality tests. But if they couldn’t afford to pay thousands then they were stuck with free tests that didn’t offer much accuracy.
When Molly noticed this gap in the market, Truity – a company designed to offer low costs tests that are based on science – was born. Since then, Truity has helped 25 million customers understands themselves better. It has even used their stored data to investigate how personality factors relate to everything, from income to parenting style!
So, the founder’s heart sure seems to be in the right place, but are their personality and career tests actually worth it?
How does Truity create and validate the tests?
Truity pride themselves on delivering accurate and reliable personality assessments. However, developing an accurate personality tests is incredibly time-consuming and technical. So how exactly do Truity do it?
1. Define the constructs
Personality tests measure constructs, which are specific characteristic or phenomena that can be defined and measured.
The first step to creating a personality test is for Truity to decide which construct(s) they want to measure. If they are creating an assessment based on an already made theory (e.g., Myers Briggs), then they aim to gather a deeper understanding of each of the theorized constructs. For example, scientists at Truity will spend a lot of time researching sensing versus intuition preferences, or thinking versus feeling.
Whereas, if they are building a personality test from scratch, without established theoretical backing, Truity’s first step is to flesh out ideas and define them as a distinct construct that can be assessed.
2. Decide the test layout
After defining constructs, the team at Truity then decide what format they would like their personality items to be. They ask questions such as would people answer a multiple choice question, or rate their agreement to a statement?
3. Pick the test questions
Truity then begin to write a long list of test items (questions) that capture each of these constructs. Getting a good list of items is actually really hard – you can’t just throw together a combination of questions and hope it works. Often, only 10-20% of the items will pass when subject to statistical testing.
4. Conduct statistical tests to decide the finalized test
The team at Truity then use statistical testing to analyze how good each of their items are. After conducting some initial tests, the developers at Truity then test them on a population. During this phase, they aim to recruit as many people to take the test as possible. They more data they collect, the better! From both the initial statistical tests, and the tests conducted on a population, there are numerous things the team at Truity check for. The main things that are checked are:
1. Reliability, which measures whether the assessment produces consistent results. Our personality doesn’t change much over our lifetime, so in theory if person takes the test in July it should be the same in the December. Reliability can measured by:
- Test-retest reliability. Which is a measure of how well two test scores correlate when a single person has taken the same assessment on two separate occasions. The higher the test-retest score, the better the reliability of an assessment.
2. Validity, which ensures that the assessment measures what it is supposed to. This means that the assessments must measure the personality constructs (i.e., the items must represent extraversion, a sensing preference or conscientiousness). Researchers will also look at an items predictive validity, which explores how effective the test is at measuring real world outcomes.
What can Truity’s tests be used for?
Truity tests are generally used for both career and personal use. Regardless of what we decide to use the test for, each test is designed to help us to understand ourselves, our strengths and how we interact with others.
Truity do not recommend that employers should ever use these tests in the hiring or selection process. This is because these tests have not been designed for situations in which the candidate may be motivated to make a good impression, such as in an employment interview.
Some of Truity’s assessments are created for specific populations, such as students at a particular school or employees in teams at a large company. Whereas other tests are developed for use of the general public (i.e., people like you and me!). Truity also conducts work for non-profit organizations, to help people who want, and need it, the most!
How much do Truity’s tests cost?
All of the Truity’s tests are available to take free of charge. Once you’ve completed the test, you will get a small report that summarizes your results and offers you advice in terms of skill development.
However, Truity also offer an ‘upgrade’, which generally costs $19 (but it can vary for some tests). With this upgrade, you will get a far more detailed and in-depth break down of your test results. It is a far more comprehensive report than what the free version offers. I can speak from experience in saying that it is worth the money!
What does each test offer?
The company offers a wide range of different tests that measure our personality for personal use, or for use in our career search. Their main tests are:
Personality Tests:
- The TypeFiner personality test is a 10 minute test that measures our personality across four domains, and 23 facets. Based on the work of Myers and Briggs, the TypeFinder test defines our preferences for Extroversion versus Introversion, Sensing versus iNtuition, Thinking versus Feeling, and Judging versus Perceiving.
- The Enneagram personality test is a 10 minute test designed to help us understand where we fit in the Enneagram personality system. Comprised of 105 questions, this tests measures us across nine different personality types.
- The Big Five personality test is a 5 minute test designed to help us understand ourselves better on the five personality traits of: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.
- The DISC assessment is a 5 minute personality assessment that measures our personality. It measures our personality across four styles: Dominance, Influence, Conscientiousness and Steadiness.
Career Tests:
- The Holland Code career test is a five minute test that is designed to help us understand what type of jobs we may thrive in based on our interests and aptitude. Based on the earlier work of John Holland, this tests measures our personality across the six types of: realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising and conventional.
- The Enneagram Professional Edition is a 10 minute test designed to help us understand how our Enneagram personality type can influence our workplace behavior, communication and leadership.
- The TypeFinder for the Workplace is a 10 minute test designed to measure you personality in the workplace. It applies the Myers and Briggs 16 personalities theory to our workplace behavior.
- The Career Personality Profiler is a 15 minute test that is designed to aid us in our career exploration and get us started on the right path. It combines the well-researched and respected Holland Code and Big Five theories.
- The TypeFinder for Career Planning is a 15 minute career personality test that is designed to accurately measure our personality traits and interests and, from this, assess our ideal career path. It combines both the Holland Code and 16 personalities theory.
Disclosure: Our Affiliate Relationship with Truity
We have spent countless hours reviewing online personality tests and career assessments, as much of our mission here at The Career Project relates to helping individuals find their ideal career match. In searching high and low, we came the conclusion that the best personality tests online (and the best post-test analysis) are the ones created by Truity.
We like Truity so much that we approach them to ask if we could refer our visitors to them. As such, The Career Project is an affiliate of Truity. This means that if you click one of the links on our site to take a free test on Truity, and then you upgrade for the expanded report, we will earn a commission on that sale. That’s how we pay the bills around here! The upgrade won’t cost you any more.
Please don’t think this influences our review or opinion though – it doesn’t. You see, all of the major personality testing companies have affiliate programs and are willing to set up a similar relationship with us. But we opted only to work with Truity, as we love their tests and we were happy customers of theirs long before the business relationship!
Conclusion
To answer the big question outlined at the beginning… Yes, Truity is really good!
Ignoring all the long-term debates surrounding personality testing and its usefulness in the workplace, the tests at Truity appear to be based on scientific evidence and research. The team at Truity have spent years creating excellent personality assessments. Through research and technical assessment, they are producing free, high-quality, assessments for organizations, the general population and for special populations.
These assessments have met Truity’s aim: to bridge the gap between highly expensive and overpriced personality tests and the free, but inaccurate, ones.
What next?
If you found this article helpful and would like to understand yourself a little better, then head over to the Career Personality Profiler or the Typefinder Personality Test to kickstart your journey to finding your true self!