Self-report measure

Sensation-Seeking: Calculated thrill-seeking

Sensation-Seeking: Calculated thrill-seeking uses 10 International Personality Item Pool statements to assess Sensation-Seeking: Calculated thrill-seeking.

You learn how much you seek excitement through planned, measured risks.

For anyone who likes planned thrills and new experiences.

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Report and PDF $4, paid after you finish.

Your answers stay private.

It comes from personality research on seeking excitement in measured, deliberate ways.

Sample result, example data. Illustrative chart with invented scores; it does not describe any real respondent.

What this test is

Welcome. Sensation-Seeking: Calculated thrill-seeking uses 10 International Personality Item Pool statements to assess Sensation-Seeking: Calculated thrill-seeking.

The measure

It has 10 items, each answered on a 5-point (Very Inaccurate … Very Accurate) scale.

International Personality Item Pool (ipip.ori.org).

At a glance

Items

Response scale

5-point (Very Inaccurate … Very Accurate)

Est. time

~1 min

Access

Free to take · Full report and PDF for $4, or $2 to repeat

What it measures

Ten statements describe a taste for excitement pursued with planning and care: enjoying adventurous activities after preparing for them, seeking new experiences while taking sensible precautions, and liking challenges that test one's skill. The emphasis is on excitement within controlled limits.

Zuckerman (1979) described sensation seeking as the need for varied, novel and complex experiences and the willingness to take risks for them. Later work distinguished between forms of sensation seeking that differ in impulsivity and danger. The statements here come from the public-domain International Personality Item Pool (IPIP) and describe the calculated form separately.

The ratings are combined into a single score. Higher scores describe a stronger appetite for excitement pursued deliberately; lower scores describe a preference for familiar and calm activities. Calculated thrill-seeking is often associated with adventurous hobbies and careers rather than with reckless behavior.

The scale is used in research on risk-taking and personality. On this site, the Impulsive Thrill-Seeking and Dangerous Thrill-Seeking scales describe less controlled forms, and the IPIP Behavioral Inhibition and Activation Scales include Fun-seeking.

Validity evidence

Calculated thrill-seeking — deliberate pursuit of novel experiences with some degree of planning — captures the experience-seeking and boredom-susceptibility components of sensation seeking (Zuckerman, 1994).

Example item

“Face danger confidently.”

Very InaccurateModerately InaccurateNeither Accurate nor InaccurateModerately AccurateVery Accurate

Illustrative only. During administration items are presented one screen-set at a time; response-key direction is never shown to respondents.

Scoring & interpretation

Your report explains each of your scale scores in plain language.

References

Zuckerman, M. (1994). Behavioral expressions and biosocial bases of sensation seeking. Cambridge University Press.
Goldberg, L. R. (1999). A broad-bandwidth, public domain, personality inventory. Personality Psychology in Europe, 7, 7-28.

Sample report preview

The report shows your total score and where it falls across the range of possible scores, followed by a plain-language explanation of what scores in that region describe. Where the instrument has published interpretive bands, the report names the band and what it means. It closes with notes on how to read the result and on when a conversation with a qualified professional may be useful.

Report contents
Section	What it shows
Score	Your scale score, computed with the published scoring key.
Comparisons	How your scores compare with a published comparison group.

It is free to take, and the full report with a downloadable copy is $4.

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