Online Tests

[Misha]

At one of the other forums that I frequent, several of the girls have been taking the following test on personality disorders, and putting a LOT of weight on the results that they get. I remind them that it's a short test and not exactly a diagnosis of all these many disorders, but some are really starting to label themselves.

Any thought/discussion around this? It is so hard to prevent people, especially young people, from diagnosing themselves with these tests (or for that matter a good old-fashioned paper-copy DSM-IV).... Yet they are useful. How do we determine their value, and limit their application?

URL of the test: http://www.4degreez.com/misc/personality_disorder_test.mv
URL for more info: http://www.4degreez.com/disorder/index.html

 

[braveheart]

With me, it always comes high for avoidant and dependent, with borderline varying depending on how I'm doing. Which is pretty accurate, really. [even though its based on ye olde DSM where dissociation isn't mentioned in borderline.]

 

[Halo]

To quote what David said on another thread about online tests or questionnaires

"It's important to keep in mind that online "tests" such as this are at best rough screening tests and should be viewed as hypotheses - possibilities to be explored and either verified or rejected. They do NOT generate diagnoses. No test can do that."

 

[Bones]

I do a lot of online personality tests, but just for fun, I really don't take them seriously.
I think some are better than others, depending on how they are structured, and some can also be quite bad.
It also depends on other factors like the mood your in and your current life situation too, I think.

I did this one that is linked here, but I don't think its very good because the answers consist of only yes/no. Its hard to answer some things as either yes or no.
And I don't totally agree with its outcome. Its somewhat accurate I think, but not completely.

I've done some other online personality disorder test, which I think was better than this one and I got generally similar, but different outcomes.