Q. My teacher says that we are going to have a test quiz next week. Isn’t that term a bit redundant? What in the world is a test quiz?

A. Ah, the wiley test quiz. It’s an odd creature indeed and it is very rarely encountered in the wild. In fact, you are a very lucky student to have a teacher that even knows what a test quiz is much less is wiling to administer one.

A test quiz is a preparatory quiz that is given in advance of a major test. Its purpose is to familiarize you with the type of questions that are going to be asked on the major test without revealing the actual questions that will be asked.

For example, if you’ve ever taken the PSAT test, then you’ve taken a test quiz. The PSAT test is designed to prepare you to take the actual SAT tests that many colleges require high school students to take before applying for admission.

The fact that your teacher is willing to give you a test quiz means that he or she truly cares about you and wants you to do well on the actual test that will soon follow. If you read between the lines, you might also see where your teacher is saying words to the effect of “the actual test is going to be tough folks so I’m going to give you a test quiz, in advance, so you’ll have a better idea what you’ll need to study.”

There aren’t many teachers who are willing to take the time to write a test quiz and that’s the reason why most students will never see one in the “wild”.

Take advantage of you teacher’s generosity and study well for your test quiz. The chances are you’ll see the same concepts in the actual test that you saw in the test quiz. If you do well on the test quiz then you’ll probably do well on the test itself. If you fail the test quiz, however, you’d better hits the books harder and leave the partying until after the test.

Q. My students have asked me for a popular quiz. Can you recommend one?

A. The answer to that question depends upon what your students mean when they say “popular”.

Do they mean a quiz that can tell them if they are “popular”, or do they mean a quiz that is popular because everyone likes taking it?

Hmm, maybe I can craft one answer that covers both options. You see, a popular quiz, also know as a popularity quiz, it very popular in itself. Starting at about third grade the concept of being “popular” takes root and children begin to seek the “status” that being popular seems to offer to them. It isn’t until much, much later in life that they learn there are more important things than being popular. Chief among the more desirable traits are being noble, honest, truth worthy, and caring. However, for now, let’s focus on popular.

A popular quiz purports to measure personality traits that make someone popular. It measures such earth-shaking issues as:

How many parties have you been invited to? How many times a day does someone compliment your clothes? Home many boys (girls) want to be your crush? Do people imitate the “cute” things that you say? Are you always picked first to be on a team?

Supposedly these questions measure your popularity. The sad thing is that many kids believe that these issues are important and either walk away devastated because they are not popular, or have an inflated opinion of themselves because they “passed” the popular quiz.

Let me go on record and state that a popular quiz should be clearly labeled: “For entertainment purposes only”. There should be a sub label that says: “If taking this test makes you think that being popular is important then your lights are on but nobody’s home”.

If your students want a popular quiz, and their intent is to measure their popularity, I would tell them that they have better things to measure in their life. Recommend an honesty quiz, or a help your neighbor quiz, or a what’s wrong with drugs quiz. While these may not qualify as a popular quiz, you’ll be doing your students a much bigger favor by holding up the mirror of reality to their face than you will by having anything to do with administering a popular quiz.

Q. I’m about to graduate High School and I don’t know what I want to be “when I grow up”. Do you think that a career quiz might help me decide?

A. Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! But maybe not for the reasons that you think. You see, as the great Quizmaster, I’ve found one thing to be true: A career quiz, or any quiz for that matter, is always biased towards the thoughts and belief’s of the person who wrote it.

Usually a career quiz is written for entertainment purposes only. Now, if you are calling it a career quiz, but you really mean some sort of standardized occupational guidance test like professional career counsellors and the military use, then those are typically valid assessments of your career capabilities.

However, since you are asking the question here, and I am definitely not a career counsellor, then I’m going to assume that you are talking about your run-of-the-mill career quiz like the type that you find in typical magazines and on a variety of general audience web sites.

So, the reason that I said “Yes, yes, a thousand times yes” is because anything that gets someone thinking about career options is a good thing. A well-written career quiz has the effect of causing you to brainstorm over your career options. What you want to be “when you grow up” may be a moving target for you. Most people evolve as they mature and their goals change. What sounds like a good idea now may be far away from what you will eventually become. However, as I said, a career quiz gets you thinking and that’s a start!

When looking for a career quiz take a good look at the type of questions that are being asked. Remember what I said about the author’s bias earlier? You want to find a career quiz that asks “horizontal” questions rather than “vertical” ones. For example, a horizontal question might be: “Do you enjoy working against deadlines?”, while I vertical question might be “do you prefer the precision of hand tools versus the speed of power tools?”.

Horizontal career quiz questions are designed to explore general career likes and dislikes while “vertical” questions tends to try and shoehorn you into a particular career path. Now don’t get me wrong, there is a place for a vertical career quiz. For example, if you are thinking about a career in woodworking, and you are trying to decide if you want to be a cabinet maker or a house framer, a vertical career quiz is exactly what you need.

The important thing to remember is to never make a career decision based solely upon the results of some career quiz that you happen to come across. If the quiz gets you to thinking that you might enjoy some particular career, then research that option more fully. A career quiz is simply another tool to help you navigate the pathways of life. Good luck!

Q. Does a friendship quiz really work?

A. That depends upon what results you are seeking from a friendship quiz. If you are seeking to learn how to become a better friend, then the real results are found more in understanding the lessons that are hidden in the question rather than trying to pick the right answer. In fact, if the friendship quiz is well designed, the answer to each question will be very apparent without even having to guess.

There are certain well-defined traits that make a person a good friend, and there are other “variable” issues that get thrown into the mix.

Some of the well-defined traits include loyalty, honesty, the ability to listen, and the ability to understand your friend’s feelings. A friendship quiz should give you a way to measure whether or not you have those traits.

These kinds of well-defined traits are easy to work into a friendship quiz. What’s not so easy are the “variable” traits that I mentioned. For example, knowing when to “butt out” of your friend’s business is a trait that no friendship quiz can measure. Likewise, knowing when to say “No” to a friend’s request is another vague concept that no friendship quiz is likely to be able to quantify.

The real issue is: Do you actually need to take a friendship quiz to figure out if you are a good friend? Maybe yes, maybe no. If you think of the friendship quiz as a “checklist”, then you can run down that checklist to see if you seem to be meeting the basic requirements.

However, if you “fail” the friendship quiz that doesn’t mean that you aren’t a good friend. A friendship quiz, like any quiz, has a built-in bias since it measures what the quiz’s author thinks are valuable traits of friendship. The author may be all wrong in that the friendship quiz may measure things that aren’t important to you and your friends.

My advice is to consider a friendship quiz as an “entertainment only” device and not something that will cause you to become a hermit if you don’t score 100%.

The best friendship quiz is one that only your head and your heart knows the answers to. Treat your friends like you would want to be treated and you won’t need a friendship quiz to keep score.

Q. I don’t like my children spending so much time on the computer and playing video games. Can you help me find or develop a fun quiz to stimulate their thinking?

A. A fun quiz is an excellent way to keep kids occupied especially during the vacation months when learning takes a hiatus.

The key to designing a fun quiz is to keep the subjects relevant to things that interest your children while managing to stretch the limits of their knowledge.

A fun quiz does not have to be so easy that it’s seen as a joke, nor does it have to be boring. Here’s an example:

Let’s say that one of your children enjoys playing with American Girl dolls and her favorite is Kirsten. Now, we all know that Kirsten moved to the United States from Sweden when she was a little girl, right?

Instead of asking a fun quiz question like “Where did Kirsten live before moving to the United States?”, which any devoted Kirsten fan knows the answer to already, you could ask: “What colors are on the Flag of Sweden, where Kirsten used to live?”. This serves the purpose of bringing subjects into the fun quiz that your children are interested in, yet it stretches the limits of their knowledge and forces them to learn while having fun!

Sneaky parents, aren’t we?

You can create fun quiz contests where you design the quiz, print out multiple copies, and distribute them to your child’s play group, Brownie or Cub Scout Troop, or other occasions where two or more children are gathered together. You can have prizes for the most interesting answer, or for any other metric that you care to use.

Remember that the key word in fun quiz is fun. If the kids catch on that you are actually making them learn something then the magic may disappear and your fun quiz will turn into just another dumb thing that Mom or Dad wants them to do.

A fun quiz does not have to be limited to small children. You can create a fun quiz that allows your teenager to earn “borrow the car” points by answering traffic safety questions.

Employees can also participate in a fun quiz where you award points or prizes for answering questions about your products or services or, perhaps, questions about your biggest and smallest clients.

The point that I am trying to make here is that a quiz does not have to be something dreadful. A fun quiz can be used to teach and entertain at the same time. Go ahead, try it yourself. My challenge to you is to create a fun quiz that will entertain, stimulate, and teach the people who take it.

Q. Can you tell me the benefits of publishing an online quiz versus a printed one?

A. Well, the first benefit of publishing an online quiz that comes to mind is the fact that it’s an outstanding way to drive traffic to your web site. People love quizzes and they take ones that are printed in magazines all of the time. It’s reasonable to assume that if these same people knew about the existance of an online quiz that they would beat a path to your home page.

Another great feature of offering an online quiz is that you can change the subject regularly. In fact, you could offer a subscription where members sign up to be notified whenever a new online quiz gets posted.

An online quiz can also be used as a sales tool. One of the best ways of accomplishing this is to link your quiz questions to affiliate sites where you earn money when people make purchases. Then you can have a “scavenger hunt” online quiz where people have to visit those sites to find the quiz answers.

People also like to take an online quiz because they can get instant scoring without having to turn the page upside down, or flip to the end of the magazine, to find out how they did. You can even design your online quiz so that it gives instant feedback after every answer is entered.

One last thing to consider is that you can create keyword-rich versions of your online quiz and then post the URLs to search engines. That way you will not only get search traffic from people who like quizzes, but you’ll get traffic from people who are searching on the terms that you include in your online quiz!

So, while it’s not likely that a printed quiz is going to become obsolete any time soon. The Internet has once again forever impacted the way that we communicate. Today’s latest example? The online quiz.

Q. Is there anything real behind a love quiz?

A. Good question. The answer is “maybe, maybe not”. You see, the value of a love quiz depends upon who designed it and what the purpose of the love quiz is. If it was written by a magazine writer, for entertainment purposes, then that’s a good example of the “maybe not” category. However, if the love quiz was written by a professional who is trained in behavioral sciences, psychology, or relationship counseling, then you might be over into the “maybe so” side of the answer.

You see, a love quiz can be based upon real, substantive issues, questions that really matter and answers that provide insight, or they can be frivolous and designed to give a few yucks to a group of bored girls.

If your love quiz has questions such as: “How important to you is quality time apart in a relationship?”, or “Could you forgive infidelity if you were partially to blame for the act being committed?”, then the love quiz is attempting to identify core relationship issues that tell you something about yourself and/or your significant other.

If, on the other hand, the love quiz has questions like: “Could you date a guy who wore braces?”, or “What would you do if your crush burped in front of you?”, then you’re probably reading a teen magazine love quiz that has no significant value.

Even a love quiz that is written with the best intentions can provide misleading results if taken in an uncontrolled environment where the quiz taker may not understand a particular question or where the possible answers are confusing or poorly worded. For the best results, a genuine love quiz should be administered by a professional and the answers analyzed afterwards. That way issues can be explored and answers clarified.

The true purpose behind a professionally designed love quiz, especially a love quiz that is taken by both people in the relationship, is to determine whether or not the relationship has a long-term chance of survival based upon quantifiable personality characteristics that have been determined to be important in committed relationships.

These characteristics include all of the traits that you might expect such as: honesty, integrity, understanding, forgiveness, drive, ambition, moral strength, religious views, political affiliations, money management skills, sense of humor, and the importance of physical attractiveness to the other person.

By taking a love quiz that explores these issues, and having the results mediated by a qualified professional, a couple has the opportunity to make decisions about the viability of a long term relationship based upon their view of what is important to each other. If a love quiz results in one partner having viewpoints that are too far apart form the other partner’s, then a red flag should be raised.

An entertaining love quiz, on the other hand, is best reviewed by a bunch of friends chatting on AOL Instant Messenger or their cell phones.

Whether the love quiz is for real, or for enjoyment only, the quiz takers should be cautioned against putting too much value in the final results.

No one should make long term relationship decisions based upon someone else’s standards. In the end it is the magic and chemistry between two people that provides the answers to the only love quiz that really matters!

Q. I didn’t get a job that I interviewed for. The employer told me that I had “failed” the personality quiz. How is that possible? Does this mean that I have no personality?

A. “Fail” is a pretty strong word when it comes to taking a personality quiz. In fact, it is so strong that it makes me wonder about the professionalism of the potential employer that administered the personality quiz to you.

There is no pass/fail in a personality quiz; especially an employment personality quiz. There are simply factors that are important to the employer that either are, or are not, present in your personality.

To say that you “failed” the personality quiz is a misnomer. You simply did not have some personality traits that the employer deemed important for the particular job that you applied for.

Other than the fact that they insulted you, they probably did you a favor by giving you that personality quiz. By screening you out based upon a certain personality profile, they saved you from accepting a job that you would probably have ended up hating and leaving after a short while.

A personality quiz is an interesting animal. There are actually many different types. You’ve already encountered a pre-employment personality quiz, but that’s not the only type out there.

Before we go off into the subject of a personality quiz, it’s important that we agree upon the definition of the term personality. Let’s keep it short:

Your personality consists of all the traits and behaviours that make you unique and that determine how you are likely to act in any given situation.

Given that this definition is true, then a personality quiz is designed to measure those traits and to quantify them into some meaningful profile that enables someone to predict how you will behave.

Is that really possible? Yes, in most instances it is possible to accurately how someone is LIKELY to behave under a given set of circumstances. The key word here is LIKELY. We’ve all seen or read about people who have exhibited extraordinary acts of heroism who were otherwise thought of as a most unlikely hero due to being timid, shy, young, or whatever.

It is not possible to totally predict anyone’s behaviour no matter how sophisticated a test is or how educated the person who designed it was.

While the pre-employment personality quiz is designed to match candidates with job vacancies and predict the likelyhood of that candidate thriving in that particular business’ culture, there are also other types of personality quiz that are used for other purposes.

Closely aligned to the pre-employment personality quiz is the promotion candidate personality quiz. A quiz of this type is designed to match the personality of an existing employee, who is being considered for promotion, to the type pf personality that is needed to survive in the position for which there is a vacancy.

A relationship personality quiz is designed to test the compatibility factors between two people. It measures those traits that have been determined to promote a long term relationship.

There is also a type pf personality quiz that measures a person’s sanity. It is typically used by the legal system to determine if someone is “legally insane” and can be held accountable for their actions in a court of law.

And then there is the personality quiz that is designed for entertainment purposes only. These are typically found in magazines and are developed by writers for the sole purpose of amusing their readership if not for simply filling pages.

You shouldn’t put too much weight on your scores for this type of personality quiz. The questions are rarely scientific and there is no sense getting your panties in a wad over something that has no real merit.

As far as the “scientific” personality quiz is concerned, none of them are 100% accurate and a skilled quiz taker, or a pathological lier, can skew a personality quiz to meed their own purposes. Like anything else that can’t be seen, touched, or smelled, take these personality quiz results with a grain of salt.

Q. Can you help me come up with a cool quiz?

A. I am known as the King of Cool in the realm of the Quiz master. This question is right up my alley!

The term cool quiz means different things to different people. As you might imagine, the subject of the quiz has to be something that is appropriate for the age group that will be taking the quiz. What constitutes a cool quiz for one group might be a snoozer for a different group.

For example. Put together a Harry Potter quiz for a group of 8-year-olds and you’ve probably got yourself a cool quiz. Compose a “Which American Idol winner is your soul mate” quiz for a group of teens and you’re likely to have come up with another cool quiz.

Married people might call “What home style is right for you” a cool quiz, and dog lovers would probably flip over something that tests their breed trivia skills.

So, as you can see, cool is a moving target. The underlying requirements of a cool quiz is that it addresses a topic that is “cool” to the targeted group, and that it uses those answers to make the person who takes the quiz look cool for knowing the answers, or at least attempting to take the quiz.

Once you get a reputation for having developed a cool quiz the word spreads. At some point it becomes cool just to take the quiz and people will do it just so others will think that they are cool.

There are lots of examples of this phenomenon among users of AOL. When one person spots a cool quiz, they pass it on to their AOL friends, who pass it on to more AOL friends, who pass it on, and on, and on. Eventually the quiz breaks out of the AOL family and gets passed around to people all over the Internet. You really know that you’ve encountered a cool quiz when you can find it mentioned in Google.

Don’t try too hard to develop a cool quiz though. Cool isn’t something that can be manufactured. It either is cool or it isn’t. If you don’t end up with a cool quiz, don’t despair. Just sit down and write another one. Do some research and find out what people think is cool these days and then put your quiz together. When you finally make a cool quiz, you’ll know it.

You could conduct training by dimming the lights, running a presentation, and hoping that everyone is awake and, you know, learning. You can hand out printed packets, and email documents to everyone, and hope that your staff takes the time to read and absorb the stuff that you need them to know to do their jobs.

Or, you could quiz them, with the explicit understanding that performance reviews will be tied to their demonstrated knowledge of your products and services! Whether you’re ominous or shiny-happy about administering it, there’s no arguing with the score on a quiz. There’s no better way to enforce learning and improve performance!

Wondershare Quiz Maker is a robust Flash quiz maker for you. With it, you can produce professional Flash-based quizzes, accompanied by images, sounds, hyperlinks, animations, and narration. Results are available immediately through the FREE online reporting system QMS, or via email, and visual reports help you to identify areas of weakness.

As quiz administrator, Wondershare Quiz Maker always gives you perfect control over all aspects of your quizzes – set time limits, minimum passing scores, shuffle questions or answers, and restrictions on the number of quiz attempts!

There’s no limit to the variety of questions that you can devise with Wondershare Quiz Maker! Your questions can be true or false, multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank, sequence, word bank, matching, click map, or essay form. There’s even full support for mathematical symbols and equations, perfect for quizzing scientific, financial, and engineering groups!

You also could track the quiz results with free online Quiz Management System (QMS), it provides smart tracking and reporting kits for quiz data for free. When a participant completes a quiz online, the quiz results will be sent to QMS automatically. You could explore a live, online QMS demo at :http://www.sameshow.com/samples/qms-tour/qms-tour.html

3 Steps to make Flash quiz with Quiz Maker
Step 1: Build Quizzes
Step 2: Publish Quizzes Online
Step 3: Track Results with QMS (free)

Wondershare Quiz Maker lets you:
* Create Flash-based interactive quizzes with images, sounds, animation, and voiceover narration.
* Choose from a variety of question styles including true or false, multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank, sequence, word bank, matching, click map, or short essay.
* Have quiz results automatically emailed to the address of your choice.
* View performance results as colorful charts and detailed reports.
* Share the quiz online and track results for FREE
* Reinforce training by testing for areas of weakness.

Who Needs Wondershare Quiz Maker?
You do if you’ve ever:
* Had doubts as to whether your static presentations were effective at educating your audience.
* Needed an objective way of measuring the knowledge and skill level of your staff with respect to your products and services.
* Wanted to create professional quizzes and assessments that could be easily hosted online.

Conclusion
Overall, Wondershare Quiz Maker offers some very powerful features to create quizzes. The professional look and feel of the quizzes, the simplicity and ease of use, the flexibility in creating quizzes, the customization of messages, the instructiveness that it offers in quizzes, the flash animations that can be included, the variety of questions, ability to send results via e-mail, the ability to post results to a database, the various options to publish all make Quiz Maker and excellent program to create quizzes. Best of all there is absolutely little to no learning required to use Quiz Maker. This software is a big bang for the buck.