Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about the test, how it is scored, what happens to your answers, and who writes this site.

Is the test really free, and do I need an account?

Yes, and no. Every question, every result and every article on this site is available without payment, without registration and without an email address. The site is funded by advertising, which is why you will see ad units on some pages. There is no paid tier, no premium report and nothing held back behind a sign-up.

How long does the test take?

Most people finish in three to four minutes. There are fifteen questions, each answered on a five-point agree-disagree scale. You can move backwards to change an earlier answer at any point before you reach the results.

What do the two axes actually measure?

The horizontal axis measures economic positions: how far you favour market allocation and private ownership versus collective provision and redistribution. The vertical axis measures positions on authority: how far you favour state power to enforce order and shared values versus individual autonomy and limits on state action. The two are measured independently, which is the entire point of a two-dimensional model — it can show that someone is economically left and socially authoritarian, a combination a single left-right line cannot represent.

Why fifteen questions? Isn't that too few?

It is a deliberate trade-off and worth being honest about. Longer instruments produce more reliable estimates, but completion rates fall sharply beyond about twenty items and unfinished tests produce no data at all. Fifteen questions, weighted across both axes, are enough to place someone in a quadrant with reasonable confidence and not enough to distinguish fine gradations within one. Treat your coordinates as approximate.

How is my score calculated?

Each question carries a weight and is assigned to either the economic or the social axis. Your answer on the five-point scale is multiplied by that weight, the results are summed per axis, and each sum is normalised to a scale from -10 to +10 by dividing by the maximum achievable score for that axis. The full weighting scheme is described on our methodology page — we publish it because a test that hides its scoring cannot be checked.

Are my answers stored or sent anywhere?

No. The test runs entirely in your browser. Your individual answers are held in the page's memory while you take it and are not transmitted to our servers or written to any database. There is no account, so there is nothing to link answers to. Closing the tab discards them.

Why did I get a result I disagree with?

Usually one of three reasons. Agree-disagree items sometimes contain a premise you reject, in which case neither direction expresses your view accurately. Some questions probe general principles rather than specific policies, and people often hold a principle loosely while holding a related policy firmly. And the model measures positions, not reasoning: two people can land on identical coordinates from entirely different premises. If a result surprises you, the useful question is which specific answer produced it.

Is the test biased toward one quadrant?

Several well-known public compass tests place a large majority of respondents in the libertarian-left quadrant, which suggests calibration rather than a finding about the population. We weight questions so that the neutral midpoint of the scale corresponds to the centre of the compass, and we distribute items evenly between the two axes. No test is free of the wording choices its authors made, and ours is not either — which is why we publish the methodology rather than asking you to take the result on trust.

Can my result change over time?

Yes, and it commonly does. Political positions shift with age, circumstance, information and events. Research on panel data finds meaningful movement in individual positions across years, particularly on social questions. A result is a snapshot of what you think now, not a diagnosis of a fixed disposition.

What is the difference between the political compass and the Nolan Chart?

The Nolan Chart, published by David Nolan in 1971, uses economic freedom and personal freedom as its two axes and rotates the square forty-five degrees so that conventional left and right sit at the side corners. The political compass format, which we use, keeps the square upright with economic left-right horizontal and authoritarian-libertarian vertical. They encode very similar information in different orientations. Our history of the two-axis spectrum sets out how both descend from Hans Eysenck's factor-analytic work in the 1950s.

Which ideology am I closest to?

Your results page shows the quadrant you fall in and the ideologies positioned nearest your coordinates. Every entry in our ideology encyclopedia carries approximate coordinates on the same scale, so you can compare directly. Be careful with the interpretation: proximity on two axes does not mean you agree with a tradition's reasoning, its historical record or its policy programme.

Do you support any political party?

No. This site is independent, is not affiliated with any party, campaign, think tank or advocacy organisation, and receives no funding from any. The ideology entries are written to present each tradition's strongest case alongside the strongest objections to it, including for traditions the author personally disagrees with.

Can I use these materials for teaching?

Yes. Teachers use the test and the encyclopedia in civics, politics and philosophy classes, and that is a use we actively want. Please link to the source rather than reproducing the text wholesale, and if you are using it with under-18s, note that some articles discuss authoritarian regimes and political violence in a historical context.

The test is in English but I speak another language. Can I still take it?

The site is available in English, Italian, German, French and Spanish. The test itself, the interface, the glossary, the FAQ and all legal pages are fully translated into all five. The ideology encyclopedia and the long-form essays are currently available in English and Italian; in German, French and Spanish those pages are still served in English while the translations are written. Translations are written rather than machine-generated, so some phrasing differs slightly between languages where a literal rendering would have been misleading.

How often is the content updated?

The question set is reviewed periodically to check that items still discriminate between positions as intended — political language shifts, and a question that was informative ten years ago may no longer be. Articles carry their publication and last-updated dates. The encyclopedia is extended as entries are researched and written.

Who writes this site, and how do I get in touch?

The site is written and maintained by Ottavio Malatacca. Corrections are welcome and taken seriously — if you think an entry misrepresents a tradition or contains a factual error, the contact page has an email address, and substantive corrections are made and noted.