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. 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.