Licences: every instrument, its licence and its credit line

The rules

Only instruments whose licence allows any use, including commercial use, with no permission to ask for: at present the International Personality Item Pool, the Ten-Item Personality Inventory, the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale and the O*NET Interest Profiler.
Items are reproduced exactly as published and the instrument is named as its authors name it. Trademarked names of other tests appear only in comparison articles.
If a licence has to be argued, the instrument is out.

Every instrument and its licence

Assertiveness

Goldberg, L. R. (1999). A broad-bandwidth, public-domain, personality inventory measuring the lower-level facets of several five-factor models. In I. Mervielde, I. Deary, F. De Fruyt, & F. Ostendorf (Eds.), Personality psychology in Europe, Vol. 7 (pp. 7-28). Tilburg University Press.

Licence: Public domain (IPIP). Permission is granted automatically for any person to use IPIP items for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial. https://ipip.ori.org/newPermission.htm

Credit line used on the site: International Personality Item Pool, https://ipip.ori.org/

Key: https://ipip.ori.org/newNEOKey.htm, checked 2026-11-03.

Courage

IPIP scales measuring constructs similar to those in the Values in Action Inventory of Strengths (Peterson & Seligman, 2004), International Personality Item Pool.

Licence: Public domain (IPIP). Permission is granted automatically for any person to use IPIP items for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial. https://ipip.ori.org/newPermission.htm

Credit line used on the site: International Personality Item Pool, https://ipip.ori.org/

Key: https://ipip.ori.org/newVIAKey.htm, checked 2026-11-03.

Creativity

IPIP scales measuring constructs similar to those in the Values in Action Inventory of Strengths (Peterson & Seligman, 2004), International Personality Item Pool.

Licence: Public domain (IPIP). Permission is granted automatically for any person to use IPIP items for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial. https://ipip.ori.org/newPermission.htm

Credit line used on the site: International Personality Item Pool, https://ipip.ori.org/

Key: https://ipip.ori.org/newVIAKey.htm, checked 2026-11-03.

Curiosity

IPIP scales measuring constructs similar to those in the Values in Action Inventory of Strengths (Peterson & Seligman, 2004), International Personality Item Pool.

Licence: Public domain (IPIP). Permission is granted automatically for any person to use IPIP items for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial. https://ipip.ori.org/newPermission.htm

Credit line used on the site: International Personality Item Pool, https://ipip.ori.org/

Key: https://ipip.ori.org/newVIAKey.htm, checked 2026-11-03.

Emotional stability

Goldberg, L. R. (1992). The development of markers for the Big-Five factor structure. Psychological Assessment, 4(1), 26-42. doi:10.1037/1040-3590.4.1.26

Licence: Public domain (IPIP). Permission is granted automatically for any person to use IPIP items for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial. https://ipip.ori.org/newPermission.htm

Credit line used on the site: International Personality Item Pool, https://ipip.ori.org/

Key: https://ipip.ori.org/newBigFive5broadKey.htm, checked 2026-11-03.

Extraversion

Goldberg, L. R. (1992). The development of markers for the Big-Five factor structure. Psychological Assessment, 4(1), 26-42. doi:10.1037/1040-3590.4.1.26

Licence: Public domain (IPIP). Permission is granted automatically for any person to use IPIP items for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial. https://ipip.ori.org/newPermission.htm

Credit line used on the site: International Personality Item Pool, https://ipip.ori.org/

Key: https://ipip.ori.org/newBigFive5broadKey.htm, checked 2026-11-03.

IPIP Big-Five Factor Markers

Goldberg, L. R. (1992). The development of markers for the Big-Five factor structure. Psychological Assessment, 4(1), 26-42. doi:10.1037/1040-3590.4.1.26

Licence: Public domain (IPIP). Permission is granted automatically for any person to use IPIP items for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial. https://ipip.ori.org/newPermission.htm

Credit line used on the site: International Personality Item Pool, https://ipip.ori.org/

Key: https://ipip.ori.org/newBigFive5broadKey.htm, checked 2026-11-03.

IPIP emotional intelligence components

Barchard, K. A. (2001). Emotional and social intelligence: Examining its place in the nomological network. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of British Columbia. Scales reproduced in the International Personality Item Pool.

Licence: Public domain (IPIP). Permission is granted automatically for any person to use IPIP items for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial. https://ipip.ori.org/newPermission.htm

Credit line used on the site: International Personality Item Pool, https://ipip.ori.org/

Key: https://ipip.ori.org/newEmotionalIntelligenceKey.htm, checked 2026-11-03.

IPIP Interpersonal Circumplex

Markey, P. M., & Markey, C. N. (2009). A brief assessment of the interpersonal circumplex: The IPIP-IPC. Assessment, 16(4), 352-361. doi:10.1177/1073191109340382

Licence: Public domain (IPIP). Permission is granted automatically for any person to use IPIP items for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial. https://ipip.ori.org/newPermission.htm

Credit line used on the site: International Personality Item Pool, https://ipip.ori.org/

Key: https://ipip.ori.org/newIPIP-IPCScoringKey.htm, checked 2026-11-03.

IPIP-NEO-120

Johnson, J. A. (2014). Measuring thirty facets of the Five Factor Model with a 120-item public domain inventory: Development of the IPIP-NEO-120. Journal of Research in Personality, 51, 78-89. doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2014.05.003

Licence: Public domain (IPIP). Permission is granted automatically for any person to use IPIP items for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial. https://ipip.ori.org/newPermission.htm

Credit line used on the site: International Personality Item Pool, https://ipip.ori.org/; IPIP-NEO-120 by John A. Johnson

Key: https://ipip.ori.org/30FacetNEO-PI-RItems.htm, checked 2026-11-03.

IPIP-VIA-R

Bluemke, M., Partsch, M. V., Saucier, G., & Lechner, C. M. (2021). Measuring cross-cultural supermodel strengths in a balanced way: The IPIP-VIA-R short scales. Assessment (as cited on the IPIP key page).

Licence: Public domain (IPIP). Permission is granted automatically for any person to use IPIP items for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial. https://ipip.ori.org/newPermission.htm

Credit line used on the site: International Personality Item Pool, https://ipip.ori.org/

Key: https://ipip.ori.org/IPIP-VIA-R_Key.html, checked 2026-11-03.

O*NET Interest Profiler Short Form

Rounds, J., Su, R., Lewis, P., & Rivkin, D. (2010). O*NET Interest Profiler Short Form psychometric characteristics: Summary. National Center for O*NET Development.

Licence: Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 (CC BY-ND 4.0), for copying the tool without modification. This page includes information from the O*NET Career Exploration Tools by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY-ND 4.0 license. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. https://www.onetcenter.org/license_tools.html

Credit line used on the site: This page includes information from the O*NET Career Exploration Tools by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY-ND 4.0 license. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA.

Key: https://www.onetcenter.org/dl_tools/ipsf/Interest_Profiler.pdf, checked 2026-11-03.

Orderliness

Licence: Public domain (IPIP). Permission is granted automatically for any person to use IPIP items for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial. https://ipip.ori.org/newPermission.htm

Credit line used on the site: International Personality Item Pool, https://ipip.ori.org/

Key: https://ipip.ori.org/newNEOKey.htm, checked 2026-11-03.

Patience

IPIP scales measuring constructs similar to those in the HEXACO Personality Inventory (Lee & Ashton, 2004), International Personality Item Pool.

Licence: Public domain (IPIP). Permission is granted automatically for any person to use IPIP items for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial. https://ipip.ori.org/newPermission.htm

Credit line used on the site: International Personality Item Pool, https://ipip.ori.org/

Key: https://ipip.ori.org/newHEXACO_PI_key.htm, checked 2026-11-03.

Perseverance

IPIP scales measuring constructs similar to those in the Values in Action Inventory of Strengths (Peterson & Seligman, 2004), International Personality Item Pool.

Licence: Public domain (IPIP). Permission is granted automatically for any person to use IPIP items for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial. https://ipip.ori.org/newPermission.htm

Credit line used on the site: International Personality Item Pool, https://ipip.ori.org/

Key: https://ipip.ori.org/newVIAKey.htm, checked 2026-11-03.

Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale

Rosenberg, M. (1965). Society and the adolescent self-image. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Licence: Public domain. The University of Maryland Department of Sociology states that the scale may be used without charge and without notifying the department, including translations or adaptations, consistent with traditional scholarly attribution. https://socy.umd.edu/about-us/using-rosenberg-self-esteem-scale

Credit line used on the site: Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, Morris Rosenberg (1965)

Key: https://socy.umd.edu/about-us/using-rosenberg-self-esteem-scale, checked 2026-11-03.

Ten-Item Personality Inventory

Gosling, S. D., Rentfrow, P. J., & Swann, W. B., Jr. (2003). A very brief measure of the Big-Five personality domains. Journal of Research in Personality, 37(6), 504-528. doi:10.1016/S0092-6566(03)00046-1

Licence: Free for any use. The author states on the TIPI page that anyone can use it for any purpose and need not ask permission. https://gosling.psy.utexas.edu/scales-weve-developed/ten-item-personality-measure-tipi/

Credit line used on the site: Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI), Gosling, Rentfrow and Swann (2003)

Key: https://gosling.psy.utexas.edu/scales-weve-developed/ten-item-personality-measure-tipi/, checked 2026-11-03.

Trust

Licence: Public domain (IPIP). Permission is granted automatically for any person to use IPIP items for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial. https://ipip.ori.org/newPermission.htm

Credit line used on the site: International Personality Item Pool, https://ipip.ori.org/

Key: https://ipip.ori.org/newNEOKey.htm, checked 2026-11-03.

What is not used

Any questionnaire about a state or a condition rather than a trait, including the IPIP scales of that kind. The IPIP single-construct index lists such scales; none is used.
Any instrument whose licence is research-only, non-commercial or unclear.
Any sixteen-type or Myers-Briggs style test.
Anything that would help an employer screen candidates.
Held back from the first release by the owner's decision, though licensed: the IPIP-HEXACO, the Mini-IPIP6 and the IPIP 16PF.

This site

The site's own text and code are the owner's. The engine that loads, scores and draws the instruments is in the repository alongside the data files, so a reader can check any figure on any page against its source.