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 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.