About the test
Self-esteem test
Get a quick picture of how you value yourself and your abilities. This free test uses the ten-item IPIP self-esteem scale, a public-domain scale modelled on Rosenberg’s work, and gives you one score with an explanation and practical suggestions.
Questionnaire / instrument: IPIP Self-Esteem
The test at a glance
- Price
- Free, including your results
- Registration
- No account required
- Length
- 10 statements
- Time
- About 2 minutes
- Format
- Self-report · five response options
- Your report
- One self-esteem score · 0–100
What the score covers
The report shows one score, called Self-esteem: how you value yourself and your abilities. The ten statements, five positive and five negative, cover three themes:
Self-acceptance
Liking and accepting yourself, with statements such as “Feel comfortable with myself”, “Dislike myself” and “Seldom feel blue”.
Confidence in your abilities
“Know my strengths”, “Am less capable than most people”, “Question my ability to do my work properly” and “Feel that I’m unable to deal with things”.
Direction and responsibility
“Just know that I will be a success”, “Feel that my life lacks direction” and “Like to take responsibility for making decisions”.
What your results show
Your result is calculated as soon as you have answered the last statement. You can preview the layout with an example report before taking the test.
- One self-esteem score from 0 to 100, marked low, medium or high, with a description of your level.
- An explanation of the scale: 0 means you disagreed strongly with every positive statement and agreed strongly with every negative one, 100 the opposite.
- Practical suggestions for strengthening self-esteem.
- If your score is low, advice on where to find support.
What does it measure?
Your general sense of self-worth and how positively or negatively you tend to evaluate yourself. It concerns your overall view of yourself rather than confidence in a particular skill.
Where does it come from?
This is the ten-item IPIP scale modelled on Rosenberg’s work on self-esteem. The wording and scoring key come from IPIP, rather than the original Rosenberg questionnaire.
How is the result calculated?
Five positive and five negative items are combined after reverse scoring. Their average is displayed on a 0–100 scale, with descriptive feedback for lower, middle and higher responses.
What can the result tell you?
The score is not a population percentile or a clinical threshold. Self-esteem can vary with experiences and current circumstances; the result is a starting point for reflection rather than a judgement of your value.
Languages and adaptations
Some item translations are reused from our existing IPIP banks; other wording was translated for this site with AI assistance. Translation does not by itself establish that a scale has the same measurement properties in another language.
Frequently asked questions
Is the test free, including the results?
Yes. You can answer all the statements and read your full report without paying or creating an account.
Is this the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale?
No. It is IPIP’s scale modelled on Rosenberg’s 1965 work. It measures the same broad trait with different, public-domain statements and its own scoring key, so your score cannot be compared directly with Rosenberg scores or norms.
Who am I compared with?
Nobody. The score shows where your answers fall between 0 and 100. Low means an average answer below 2.5 on the five-point scale and high means above 3.5, the same limits as our other IPIP tests. These are descriptive sections of the scale, not population norms or clinical thresholds.
How accurate is the test?
IPIP reports internal consistency (alpha) of .84 for the English scale, which is good for ten statements. Self-esteem also varies with experiences and circumstances, so your score may change over time. Half of our translated statements come from our IPIP-NEO question bank; the rest are our own translations and have not been validated separately.
Is self-esteem the same as self-confidence?
Not quite. Self-esteem is your overall sense of your own worth, while confidence is often about a particular skill or situation. This scale includes some statements about your abilities, but the score describes your general view of yourself.
How is it different from the optimism test?
They overlap. Five of the ten statements, including “Feel comfortable with myself” and “Dislike myself”, are also in our optimism test, so the scores tend to be similar. The self-esteem test adds statements about abilities and strengths; the optimism test adds statements about mood and outlook.
What if my score is low?
Many people go through periods of low self-esteem, and it can be strengthened. The report suggests some first steps. If low self-esteem holds you back for long periods, your GP or a psychologist can help, and treatment such as cognitive behavioural therapy works well. If you have thoughts of harming yourself, seek help immediately.
License and reuse
Public domainIPIP places its items and scales in the public domain. They may be used, copied, adapted and translated for commercial and non-commercial purposes without a fee or separate permission.
The terms below apply to the test materials. Articles, translations, software and our result descriptions may have separate terms.
Sources and further reading
Goldberg, L. R., et al. (2006). The International Personality Item Pool and the future of public-domain personality measures. Journal of Research in Personality, 40, 84-96. Scale modelled on Rosenberg, M. (1965). Society and the adolescent self-image. Princeton University Press.