Updated 3 November 2026
How orderly am I?
IPIP-NEO orderliness facet, 10 items, 2 minutes
Orderliness is liking things tidy, planned and in their place. It is one facet of conscientiousness, and the one people usually mean by perfectionism about surroundings. These ten statements are the public-domain IPIP-NEO orderliness facet.
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0 of 10 answered. Describe yourself as you generally are now, not as you wish to be in the future. Describe yourself as you honestly see yourself, in relation to other people you know of the same sex as you are, and roughly your same age.
Your results
Your answers and results are stored only in this browser, on this device. Nothing is sent to us. A share link carries your scores in the link itself.
Understanding your scores
Orderliness
High. People who score high say they like order and regularity, like to tidy up, want everything to be just right and do things according to a plan. In daily life that shows as tidy desks and homes, lists, labelled boxes and discomfort when things are out of place. This is the facet of conscientiousness that people usually mean when they call themselves a perfectionist about their surroundings. The cost is time spent arranging rather than doing, and friction with less orderly people.
Low. People who score low say they leave a mess in their room, leave their belongings around, forget to put things back and are not bothered by untidiness or by messy people. In daily life that shows as working happily amid clutter, finding things by memory rather than system, and an easy tolerance of other people's untidiness. It is not laziness, and it is separate from how hard someone works or whether they finish things; those are other facets.
How reliable is this test
Internal consistency (coefficient alpha) per scale, as published:
| Scale | Published |
|---|---|
| Orderliness | 0.82 |
Coefficient alpha as given on the key page, https://ipip.ori.org/newNEOKey.htm, accessed 3 November 2026.
No published norms exist for this instrument, so the results show raw scores against the possible range and no percentiles.
The IPIP key page gives coefficient alpha of .82 for this scale and no test-retest figure. Personality scores are fairly stable over weeks; a change of a few points between attempts is usual.
Limits worth knowing: ten items on one facet, self-reported, with no published norm sample for the facet on its own. The 120-item Big Five test scores the same facet with four items against a norm sample.
Guides that cover this
Questions people ask
Is orderliness the same as perfectionism?
It is the part of perfectionism that is about surroundings and routine. The wish to get work exactly right belongs more to achievement-striving, and the worry about getting it wrong to neuroticism. This scale measures liking for order.
Does a high score mean I am conscientious?
It means you are high on one of the six facets of conscientiousness. The 120-item Big Five test scores all six, and people often differ across them.
Why is there no percentile on this test?
No norm sample has been published for this scale on its own, and the site never estimates or invents norms. Your marker is drawn against the possible range instead, and the page says so. The Big Five tests do have published norms.
Is a high or low score better?
Neither. Each end has strengths and costs, and the research describes tendencies across large groups, not what any one person will do. The site never colours scores as good or bad.
Where do my answers go?
Nowhere. The test is scored in your browser and the result is kept only on this device. If you choose to share a link, your scores are inside the link itself and nothing is sent to this site.
Sources and licence
Instrument: Orderliness. 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.
Scoring key: https://ipip.ori.org/newNEOKey.htm, checked 2026-11-03.
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: International Personality Item Pool, https://ipip.ori.org/.