What your score says about the questions
Only 40 of the 100 statements are non-sexual, so past 59 ticks the sexual block is unavoidable by arithmetic. What each range forces, and where a score stops being informative.
Your score tells you one number directly: how many statements you ticked. Subtract it from 100 and you have the count. A 64 means 36 items applied; an 82 means 18 did.
What the score does not tell you is which 36. But the composition of the list puts real limits on the possibilities, and those limits are more informative than any band label. Here is what the arithmetic forces.
The list is not evenly divided
Counted from the canonical 100 statements as we publish them:
| Block | Statements | Where they sit in the list |
|---|---|---|
| Sexual experience | 60 | items 12–100 |
| Romance and dating | 13 | items 1–35 |
| Law and consequences | 8 | items 59–66 |
| Alcohol and drugs | 7 | items 44–52 |
| Parties and nightlife | 5 | items 15–58 |
| Rule-breaking | 4 | items 47–55 |
| Explicit messages and photos | 3 | items 32–34 |
Sixty of one hundred. That single fact drives everything below: past a certain number of ticks, the sexual block is arithmetically unavoidable, because there is nowhere else for the ticks to come from.
What each range forces
The blocks are not contiguous, so nobody works through them in order. But the sizes are fixed, and that means a given number of ticks cannot be spread arbitrarily.
A score of 87 or above (13 ticks or fewer). Reachable entirely inside romance and dating. This is the only range where a score says nothing at all about the other six blocks — 13 ticks is exactly the size of that block.
A score of 70 to 86 (14 to 30 ticks). The romance block cannot absorb this. At least one tick sits outside it, and the items adjacent to the romance run are the early sexual ones, so this range usually means kissing has become something more.
A score of 45 to 69 (31 to 55 ticks). Now the sexual block is doing most of the work. Even if every non-sexual statement on the list were ticked — all 40 of them, every party, drug, arrest and photograph item — the remaining ticks would still have to come from the sexual 60. In practice nobody ticks all 40 non-sexual items, so a score in the fifties means the sexual block is substantially checked.
A score of 41 or below (59 ticks or more). Arithmetically forced: with only 40 non-sexual statements in existence, 59 ticks means at least 19 sexual items regardless of how the rest fell. Below 41, every further point is a sexual item, because there is nothing else left to tick.
A score under 20 (81 ticks or more). At least 41 of the 60 sexual statements, plus effectively the whole of everything else. Scores this low require breadth across all seven blocks — which is why they are rare and why a good share of them are entered as a dare rather than lived.
Two people on the same number
The compression is real. Take 64 — 36 ticks:
- Reader A: the full romance block (13), the first eleven sexual items (11), all five party items (5), four alcohol items (4), three photo items (3). Total 36. Nothing legal, no drugs beyond alcohol.
- Reader B: four romance items, 24 sexual items, six drug and alcohol items, two arrests. Total 36.
Same score, same band label, two lives that overlap in a handful of statements. The page for 64 can tell you the count and what it implies; it cannot tell you which reader you are, and neither can anyone comparing numbers with you.
This is the honest limit of a single total, and the reason the per-item view is the more interesting one.
Where the score is most and least informative
Most informative at the ends. A 97 says three ticks, which is nearly specific. A 6 says 94 ticks, which is nearly specific in the other direction. At both extremes, the number and the item set almost coincide.
Least informative in the middle. Around 50 the possible combinations are at their most numerous, which is precisely where people most want the number to mean something. A 50 is 50 ticks out of 100 — the maximum ambiguity the instrument can produce.
That shape is worth knowing before you read anything into a mid-range result. It is also why the band labels are written as descriptions of coverage rather than as verdicts: "about half the list applied" is all a 50 supports.
Reading your own number usefully
- Convert to a count. 100 minus your score. That is the only figure the test measures directly.
- Check it against the block sizes above. If your count exceeds 13, ticks fell outside romance. If it exceeds 40, the sexual block is involved by arithmetic, not by inference.
- Look at the items, not the total. Every statement has its own page explaining what it asks and what ticking it costs.
- Do not compare across tests. Our teen, couples, college and innocence lists have their own blocks and their own weights — two points per answer on the 50-item ones. A 70 on one is not a 70 on another, as the comparison page sets out.