The arithmetic, in full
How Rice Purity Test scoring works
Start at 100. Subtract one point for every statement on the list you have done. What is left is the score, and that is the entire method — there is no weighting, no formula behind it and nothing about your answers that the number keeps.
The whole sum, on one line
100 − (statements ticked) = your score
Tick 27 of the 100 statements and the score is 73. Tick none and it is 100. Tick all 100 and it is 0. Every step between is one statement, which is why the number lands on whole numbers only and why no score on the classic list is impossible to reach.
Three things the number is not
It is not weighted. Item 1 is holding hands and the sheet ends with its heaviest statements, and both cost one point. Two people on 90 can have ticked ten completely different statements, which is the single most useful fact about reading a score: it tells you how many, never which.
It is not a percentage. The scale happens to run 0 to 100 because the list happens to hold 100 statements. On the shorter lists here, each of the 50 statements is worth two points to keep the same 0-to-100 scale — so the same number means half as many ticks. That is why a score is only comparable against scores from the same test.
It is not a rating. Nothing in the arithmetic knows what any statement is about. The bands this site prints on top of the number — from Untouched at 100 down to Off the Charts at the bottom — are labels for ranges, not judgements about the people in them.
Why the number can only fall
Every statement is written in the past tense: have you ever. An answer that is true today cannot become false next year, so a retake finds the same ticks plus any new ones. The score moves down or stays exactly where it is.
That makes a sequence of scores a timeline rather than a scoreboard. Someone who took it at seventeen and again at twenty-four has two numbers whose difference is a count of what happened in between — which is also why average scores fall with age without saying anything about the people at either end.
What the arithmetic means when you compare scores
Same test, same meaning
Two scores from the classic 100-item list are directly comparable: one point is one statement for both people. The gap between them is a number of statements, no interpretation required.
Different test, different unit
A 70 on a 50-statement list means 15 ticks; a 70 here means 30. Same number, half the experiences, different questions — the scores do not belong on the same axis.
This is why every test on this site keeps its own results and its own averages, and why the statistics page never pools them. What a given number means is a separate question from how it was produced, and has its own page for each score from 0 to 100.
Watch the arithmetic run
The counter moves one point per box as you tick, in your browser. Only the final number is ever sent.
Start the testQuestions about the scoring
How does the Rice Purity Test score work?
You start at 100 and lose one point for every statement on the list you have done. Nothing is weighted: holding hands and the heaviest item on the sheet each cost exactly one point. The score is 100 minus the number of boxes you ticked, which means the number is a count of experiences, not a rating of them.
Is the Rice Purity Test score a percentage?
No, though it looks like one because the scale runs 0 to 100. It is a count: 100 statements, one point each. The resemblance is a coincidence of the list's length, and it breaks on the shorter tests, where 50 statements are worth two points apiece to keep the same scale.
Can a Rice Purity Test score go up?
Not honestly. Every statement is past tense — have you ever — so an answer that is true today stays true, and a retake can only find more of them true. The score moves down or stays where it is, which is why people retake it years apart and read the drop as a timeline rather than a decline.
Is a low or high Rice Purity Test score better?
Neither, and the scale is not built to answer that. It counts which of one particular list of experiences you have had. A person with a low number has done more of the things on this sheet than a person with a high one, and the sheet is a campus document about student life whose author and date nobody has produced — student accounts place it in circulation by the 1980s, which is repeated far more often than it is evidenced. It is not a measure of character, health or worth.