About us
Kognita is a small Swiss project. Not a corporation, not an institute, not a university. We say so because other providers in this niche like to suggest that a research institution stands behind them.
Why this site exists
Anyone looking for an IQ test in Switzerland usually ends up on one of two kinds of site. The first wants an email address and sends advertising afterwards. The second shows a number after ten minutes, charges for it and never explains how it came about. We found both too little.
Kognita does it the other way round: the test is free, the method is published on the site, every number comes with its measurement uncertainty, and what the test cannot do is stated as plainly as what it can. The detailed report is what you pay for, and only if you actually want it.
How the test was built
The questions are produced by a program following explicitly stated rules. That was the most important decision in the project: no item comes from a protected instrument, difficulty follows from the construction rather than from a hunch, and every run shows different questions.
Scoring follows item response theory, the same computational framework used by large standardised instruments. The difference lies not in the model but in the norming and in the testing conditions.
How we make money
Solely by selling reports. We do not sell data, we run no advertising, we have no affiliate business and we send no newsletter you did not ask for. When an offer is free and still earns money, the user is usually the product. Here it is the report.
Mistakes
A system of procedurally generated questions and statistical scoring contains mistakes. If you find an ambiguous question, a badly worded one or a number that is wrong, write to us. We correct it and say what was wrong. Where a question was genuinely ambiguous, we refund the report.
Editorial team
Redaktion Kognita, Redaktion. Die Texte auf dieser Seite entstehen in der Redaktion und werden vor der Veröffentlichung gegen die angegebenen Quellen geprüft. Jede harte Zahl trägt eine Quelle mit Abrufdatum. Wo die Forschungslage uneindeutig ist, steht das im Text.