Understanding EQ scores

Start with the scale

There is no canonical EQ scale: tests differ in scoring format, in norm sample and even in the definition of what they measure, so a score arrives meaning nothing until its scale is identified. That is not a flaw you stumbled into; it is the state of the field, and pretending otherwise is how numbers get over-read.

• The EQ score range, scale by scale: there is no single EQ scale. There are four common shapes, and each answers a different question.
• Why two EQ tests give two scores: you took two tests and got two numbers. Neither is lying, and the disagreement is built in.
• An EQ score is not an IQ score: the two numbers wear the same clothes, and only one of them owns the wardrobe.

The questions people bring

• What is the average EQ score? On the most common scale, exactly 100. That answer is true and it tells you nothing, which is worth understanding.
• What is a good EQ score? Good for what? The honest answer starts by refusing the question’s shape.
• EQ percentiles: a percentile of whom? The 84th percentile sounds precise. The precision belongs to the norm sample, not to you.
• How accurate is an EQ test? Accurate enough to be useful, imprecise enough that the margin should be printed next to every number. Usually it is not.
• Can you improve your EQ score? The evidence says yes, moderately, with practice over months. Nobody honest promises more than that.

Your number on the mean-100 scale

The most common commercial scale, region by region. Find the band your score sits in; each page explains what that region can honestly claim and where its particular traps are.

• An EQ score below 70: on a mean-100 scale this is the bottom two in a hundred by construction. Before it means anything about you, three duller explanations need ruling out.
• An EQ score of 70 to 84: below the middle band, above the extreme. In this region the comparison group does more work than your answers do.
• An EQ score of 85 to 99: the lower half of the middle band, where most of the norm sample lives and where single points mean the least.
• An EQ score of 100 to 114: the upper half of the middle band. The number is fine. The story people build on it is usually too big.
• An EQ score of 115 to 129: the top sixth of the scale, short of the extreme. From here upward, two artefacts start sharing the page with you.
• An EQ score of 130 or above: on an IQ test this number has a specific, well-normed meaning. On an EQ test it mostly measures the scale running out of road.

And ours

This site scores differently on purpose: a percentage of the instrument’s own maximum with the margin printed beside it, two tracks never fused into one number, and a published method with a live distribution. The test itself is free to take, and the free result is the classification and the shape of your profile.