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 first five questions are free, the price of the rest is on screen before the payment page, 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.
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 the test and the 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. Anyone giving a service away and still earning money usually pays for it with their users' data. The first five questions cost nothing here, and we sell neither data nor attention.
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.