An EQ score of 85 to 99

What the region claims

From 85 to 99 you are within one standard deviation of the average on a mean-100 scale, inside the band that holds about two thirds of any well-normed sample together with its upper half. In queue terms the region runs from roughly the 16th position in a hundred to just under the 50th. It is the most crowded stretch of the scale, and the crowding is the point.

Average is an engineering decision

The scale was built so most people land here. Finding yourself in the middle band is not a discovery about your character; it is the norming machinery doing what it was designed to do. The informative part of a middle-band result is almost never the total. It is the shape underneath: which facets sit high, which sit low, and whether any gap between them is bigger than the margin.

A 92 and a 97 are the same result. The habit of reading small leads into single numbers is the habit this whole family of pages exists to talk you out of, and the middle band is where the habit does the most quiet damage, because the differences are small and everyone has a neighbour a few points away.

What it cannot support

Any claim resting on the difference between you and the average. Being at 97 rather than 100 is a distinction the measurement cannot hold. If a report sells you a story about being "just below average", it is narrating noise.

How we handle it

We publish every score as a percentage of its own maximum with its margin printed beside it, and the method is public. The test is free to take; the free result shows your classification and the shape of your profile, and the full scored report, every figure with its margin, is available as a one-off purchase or inside membership.

The upper half of the middle, 100 to 114, has its own characteristic temptation.

The rest of this family

Every page here does the same job for a different number: the full set is indexed on the hub.