What is a Rice Purity Test?
The Rice Purity Test is a list of 100 statements about things people have done — dating, sex, drink and drugs, parties, trouble with the law — scored by subtraction. You start at 100, tick every statement that has applied to you, and each tick removes a point. The number left over counts the statements you have not ticked, and that is the whole of what it measures, though the name invites people to read it as a verdict.
It is one instrument in an older format. A purity test in general is any such checklist scored the same way; the Rice version is the 100-item one that spread from an American campus and became the default, which is why its name is used for the whole genre.
How the scoring works
Every version follows the same arithmetic. The starting number is the maximum, each statement is worth an equal share of it, and the result is bounded by the length of the list. On a 100-item test each tick costs one point; on a 50-item test each costs two, which is why those versions can only produce even numbers.
The equal weighting is the format’s defining feature and its main flaw. Holding hands and being arrested cost exactly the same point, so the score compresses a first kiss and a criminal record into the same unit. That is what makes the number easy to share and unreliable as a description of anyone.
Where the format came from
Purity tests circulated on American campuses long before the web, as photocopied sheets passed around during orientation. The version that outlasted the rest is the Rice Purity Test, a fixed list of 100 statements tied to Rice University in Houston. Student accounts place it in circulation by the 1980s, a decade repeated far more often than it is evidenced, and no dated first edition of the 100-item list has surfaced. What has surfaced is older and smaller: the university’s student newspaper reported a ten-question survey in 1924 and printed a 150-question test in its 1988 April Fools’ issue, both held in Rice’s own archive — and the university has never run any of it officially, which is why no official version exists and what an “updated” copy actually changes. The history of the test separates what is documented from what is repeated.
The Rice list is also not the only one with a paper trail. A 1993 index forwarded around MIT catalogued 33 versions then circulating between campuses, from 70 questions to 1,500 — what the archive holds, including the 500-question edition whose scoring instruction explains why every purity score is reported out of 100.
What a purity test measures, and what it does not
It measures which statements on one particular list you are willing to tick. That is a narrower thing than the name suggests, and on the classic list it is narrower still: sixty of its hundred items are about sexual experience, so the score is mostly a count of that. Nothing is verified, nothing is weighted, and the failure is one of validity rather than reliability — take it twice and you will get the same number, which does not make the number mean what people want it to mean.
Why versions disagree
Copies drift. Sites transcribe each other, soften an item, drop one, or censor the wording, and the next copy inherits the change. We reconciled ours against four live copies and published the six items they disagree about, named the two dated items in Rice University’s own archive, and set out why no official version exists. The practical consequence: a score is only comparable with another score from the same question set.
The versions on this site
Seven question sets, each with its own scale. Scores do not carry across them.
- Rice Purity Test100 questions · 1 point eachAdults 18 and over who want the full, unedited 100-item list.
- Teen Purity Test50 questions · 2 points eachStudents aged 13-17, and anyone who wants the version without the adult questions.
- Couples Purity Test50 questions · 2 points eachCouples at any stage who want a structured way to compare what they have actually done together.
- Innocence Test100 questions · 1 point eachAnyone who wants a life-experience score they can compare at a family dinner.
- College Purity Test50 questions · 2 points eachUndergraduates, and anyone who wants their university years scored rather than their whole life.
- LGBTQ Purity Test50 questions · 2 points eachLGBTQ readers and anyone who wants a list that does not assume how their dating life is shaped.
- AO3 Purity Test100 questions · 1 point eachAO3 readers and writers, and anyone who wants to know how far into fandom they have actually gone.
Questions people actually ask
What is a Rice Purity Test?
A 100-statement checklist about dating, sex, substances, parties and trouble with the law, scored by starting at 100 and subtracting one point for every statement that has applied to you. The number that remains counts what you have not ticked. Nobody publishes or certifies it — it spread as copies of copies from an American campus — and it measures no recognised construct.
What is a purity test?
A self-graded checklist of experiences. You start at 100, tick every statement that applies to you, and each tick costs a point, so the number left over is a count of the things on that particular list you have not done.
Is a purity test the same as the Rice Purity Test?
The Rice Purity Test is one purity test — the best known one, a fixed list of 100 statements associated with Rice University. Purity test is the general name for the format, which is why versions with different questions all carry it.
What is a good purity test score?
There is no good score, because the number is a count rather than a grade. A high score means fewer statements on that list applied to you, which mostly tracks how long you have been alive and what kind of life you have had.
Are purity test scores comparable between sites?
Only when the question sets match, and often they do not. Copies of the same list drift, and different versions ask different things, so two people can hold the same number after answering two different questionnaires.