Create your own Enneagram test

Enneagram vs. OCEAN

Enneagram tests are some of the most popular types of personality tests out there. They sound a bit complicated – with nine Enneagram personality types, but we’ll show you how you can easily create your own accurate and insightful Enneagram personality test with Riddle’s online quiz maker.
Before we dive in, you might note that the Enneagram test shares a lot with the popular (and less complex) personality test concept called the OCEAN model.

The main difference is that the Enneagram returns personality ‘types’ – like the Challenger or the Achiever.
The OCEAN test returns scores based on individual personality traits – like ‘Openness to experience’ or ‘Conscientiousness’.

So, as very rough comparison – the Enneagram gives a complete picture, while OCEAN breaks this into five smaller results.

The classic Enneagram personality test

So all you trivia buffs will love learning this – an enneagram is the term for a nine-sided star polygon. (While we’re on the topic – you might know an eight-sided polygon is an octagon, but did you know an eleven-sided one is an hendecagon?)

Right, back to more serious topics. This is the symbol used for the Enneagram personality test – since there are 9 core personality traits to this model.

The Enneagram model explained

The lines inside the Enneagram also have a meaning and you should use this when crafting the description for your result types.

There are directions (lines) of integration (growth) or disintegration (stress). These 2 lines represent the personality type a person moves to when they are either under stress or in a phase of positive growth.

When creating your result types, make sure to make references to the Enneagram types that a person moves toward when feeling either stressed or in a phase of health and personal growth.
This will give your Enneagram test added accuracy and credibility to each user – they should finish your test thinking “Wow, this test really ‘got’ me!” After all, you want your test-takers to be so impressed that they’ll have confidence in your expertise.

Direction of disintegration (stress)

For example, a type 2 will move towards a type 8 (Challenger, Protector). Using our career advice test example, you could craft the user’s result saying that “While you’re a type 2 (Helper), under stress, your basic desire is influenced by self-protection as you fear being harmed, violated or controlled.”

Direction of integration (growth)

The second line originating from type 2 connects with type 4 (Individualist, Romantic). One risk for a type 2 person is that in a phase of personal growth, they will overuse imagination in search of self and worry that no matter what they achieve, it won’t really matter. Basically, they can overthink things.

Enneagram personality types and OCEAN personality traits

The nine Enneagram personality types with their traits, fears and desires are:

Type	Personality	Key traits	Frightened by	Basic desire
1	Reformer	Perfectionist, principled, honest, meticulous, fair, high expectations, ethical, critical	Appearing wrong or imperfect	Goodness, integrity
2	Helper	Generous, thoughtful, people pleaser, selfless-care	Feeling unloved	To feel loved
3	Performer	Image-conscious, drive, adaptable, loves challenges, successful, ambitious, authentic	Being worthless	To feel valuable
4	Individualist	Expressive, temperamental, romantic and idealistic in their expression, love balanced lifestyle, avoid being seen as ordinary	Having no significance	To be uniquely themselves
5	Investigator	Keen sense of perception, secretive, isolate from others, processes details quickly, quick to offer solutions and opinions	Incompetence	Mastery, understanding
6	Loyalist	Highly responsible, looks for security, playful, focus on what could go wrong, often counterproductive by bringing a negative spin	Being without support	Find support and understanding
7	Enthusiast	Prefers spontaneity to rigidity, loves new ideas, proficient problem solver, optimistic leader, inspiring others. Finds it challenging to forgive others and fears criticism	Being unfulfilled, trapped	To be satisfied and content
8	Challenger	Exudes self-confidence, self-reliant, self-assured. View themselves as powerful heroes, champion for underdogs, unafraid of confrontation but often stings with the truth	Being perceived weak or vulnerable	Self-protection
9	Peacemaker	Kind, friendly, accepting, entertaining, good listener. Skill to process multiple sides of a story, skillful mediator. Seeks harmony which leads to complacency or inaction	Loss, separation, abandonment	Wholeness, peace of mind

The OCEAN model uses these 5 core personality traits:

openness to experience
conscientiousness
extraversion
agreeableness
neuroticism

Key differences

The Enneagram personality test has an extra level of complexity over the OCEAN model:

It takes into account the adjacent personality types from the circle – called wings.
In our example, a personality type 2 (Helper) also has the personalities 1 (Reformer, Perfectionist) and 3 (Achiever, Performer) as wings.
These wings influence the core personality type, taking into account that no one is ever just one personality type.

In the Enneagram theory, you are born with a dominant personality type that does not change throughout your life. However, that personality type will not 100% apply to you all the time – and you will also have traits of these other ‘wing’ personality types.

Usecases and Enneagram test creation

Enneagram tests are widely used both in practical arenas like business management and hiring, as well as more spiritual and self-help contexts. We’ve seen them vary in length from 30 to over 100 questions – it depends on you as the quiz creator.

While we often recommend 6-10 questions for more ‘general’ quizzes, we think 30 questions will be the minimum for an effective Enneagram test. Remember, you need to ask enough questions to collect enough data about each quiz taker – so you can confidently assign them the most accurate result from the nine Enneagram personality types.

Enneagram tests and personality quizzes are some of the most shared content online – if your quiz takers are enthusiastic about their results, they’ll share your test with their friends on social networks like Facebook.

Never created an Enneagram test? Start with an OCEAN test!

If you are new to creating personality tests, we highly recommend to start writing tests based on the OCEAN model first. These are much easier to create and provide fairly accurate results.
The good news? You can learn how to easily create your first OCEAN personality test by downloading our free eBook “Quizmaster”, where we provide step-by-step instructions on how to create personality tests using the OCEAN model.

Creating an Enneagram test – General guide with examples

As with any personality test, you start by creating the personality results first, before creating questions.

For an Enneagram personality test, you need nine result types that match with the nine outcomes.
You could either create a classic Enneagram test and use the same result name as the Enneagram types. Or, you can come up with your own names that each share similar traits with an Enneagram type.

Example: Which career path suits your personality

Imagine you were creating a test called “Which career path best suits your personality?” – you could use the 9 Enneagram personality traits and match them to 9 corresponding jobs.

For example, personality 2 – “Helper, Giver” – has these core characteristics:

Basic fear: to be unloved
Basic desire: to feel loved
Core temptation: to deny their own needs
Virtue: humility

So for quiz takers who get ‘Personality 2’ on your test, you might show them jobs like kindergarten teacher, caregiver or nurse.

Writing questions for an Enneagram personality test

Once you got the results created, you need to come up with questions and answer options. Dust off your thinking cap – and let’s get creative!
When creating an Enneagram personality test with 9 possible outcomes, you will have to create a quiz with a minimum of 20 questions (30 is better) and 3 to 5 answer options for each question

For every question, each answer should be associated with one or more of your result types. (Riddle uses a weighting scale to assign points for each response.)
Make your questions situation-based – and interesting!
Questions can either related to your test topic, but don’t be afraid to branch out. Random questions can keep your readers guessing – and interested.

Most typical Enneagram personality tests are (frankly) pretty boring. They ask predictable questions that make it easy to guess the corresponding result by how the question is written.
We highly recommend being more original when you create an Enneagram test with Riddle.

You will need to invest quite a bit of time to create the questions for your Enneagram personality test – but you will also find out that it is absolutely worth the effort.

Good and bad examples for Enneagram questions

Bad examples

Question: I’ve been
Answers:
a) romantic and imaginative
b) pragmatic and down to earth

Question: How often do you feel unloved
Answers:
a) never
b) sometimes
c) frequently
d) always

We have seen countless personality tests using this methodology for the answer options. These types of questions are often appropriate and unavoidable if you are creating a highly scientific test. This will trigger:

Quiz fatigue – Test takers will get into the tendency of just clicking something to get through to the results.
Audience confusion – We’ve seen many Enneagram tests use scale questions – with answers from ‘Never’ to ‘Always’. Users find it difficult to pick the most appropriate answer that describes them when options are very similar like the “Frequently” and “Sometimes”.

Good examples

Question: How do you react to critical and negative posts from your audience?
Answers:
a) I completely ignore any negative comments. I know what I am worth and trolls cannot hurt me. [This is the same as the ‘never’ answer our #2 example above.]
b) Sometimes the comments get under my skin, but I can ignore them most of the time. [‘Sometimes’ from our example.]
c) Negative comments more than annoy me, especially if there is more than one [‘Frequently’ from our example.]
d) I usually don’t even bother posting. Why open myself up to criticism and risk being slammed? [‘Always’ from our example.]

See the difference? Answering the situational question is now much more engaging. We bet you probably went through a few of your most recent posts in your head, thinking about your own reaction to negative comments. This is why situational questions get a much better and honest response – and provide more accurate results for the quiz taker.

Why should I create an Enneagram test?

While you will need to invest quite a bit of time to create the questions for your Enneagram personality test – but you will also find out that it is absolutely worth the effort.
We’ve seen a well-written Enneagram test achieve:

High engagement rates – we see up to 87% of quiz takers finish
Excellent lead generation opt-in rates – 45-50% of quiz takers is very doable (20-25X the internet average), especially if you promise to email them a detailed analysis based on their quiz results.
Strong social share rates – this depends on the topic, of course. People aren’t likely to share ‘Are you depressed?’ quiz results – but personality quizzes are some of the most shared content online.