and not-so-good questionnaires
The test methods used in psychology offer the following reference points for recognizing a good questionnaire or creating your own:
The test needs to test what it's supposed to test. For the Enneagram, this means that the questions aim to research the underlying driving forces and the object of one's attention, not one's behavior.
The questions avoid stereotypical images of a type. The true goal is to also get the existing fine gradations and various manifestations of each type.
The questions consider the differences that occur on the basis of the personal development status within the individual types. Someone who is in a state that isn’t spiritually healthy responds differently from someone who is in an average healthy state.
The questionnaire considers the often unconscious tendency to provide socially desirable answers. Rather than say what is really true for them, people sometimes say instead what they wish were true.
The questions are worded so that they can effectively differentiate between types. That means that the people who have a certain type have to be able to recognize themselves in the questions and that the people who don’t have this type don't recognize themselves. The questions thus can’t be too general or apply to excessively large groups of people. The question “Do you want to be popular among others?” aims toward a frequently occurring desire and thus isn’t suitable for differentiating between Enneagram types.
The questions differentiate according to the extent to which certain characteristics occur. I have experienced fear now and then, for example, but I definitely don’t see myself in the Enneagram type that’s almost continuously dominated by a subliminal feeling of insecurity.
The design of the test offers categories for answers from which you can clearly choose. You aren’t forced to choose between two statements in which you either don’t see yourself at all or you see yourself in both.
The test needs to test what it's supposed to test and gradually allows a congruent image to emerge. The test delivers exactly one Enneagram type as a result, and if that’s the correct one, it also appears as a result in the next one.
I could easily continue this list, especially if I were to also consider the scientific requirements for such tests, but that discussion doesn’t belong in this book.
A few notes on the side
Like many of my colleagues and course participants, I've completed numerous Enneagram tests on the Internet multiple times. The result I received often wasn’t the type in which I recognize myself. The same tests yielded different results at different times, although I hadn’t become another person in the meantime. My colleagues and course participants report similar experiences — none of us would have found our Enneagram types by using these tests. Answering questionnaires is confusing to many people because they don’t recognize themselves in the outcome or because a different result appears each time.
Chapter 5
The Enneagram and the Narrative Tradition
IN THIS CHAPTER
In Chapter 4, I introduce ways to find your own type by showing you things you can do on your own: observing yourself or taking a test. In this chapter, you'll find out about two specific methods in the narrative tradition that you can use to gain knowledge and insight: the type assessment interview and the panel interview. You'll find out how they work and how you can benefit from them. Trust me: You can certainly gain important insights about yourself with the help of the type assessment interview and the panel interview. These methods were also originally used to gain insights about the nature of people and how this nature corresponds to the Enneagram types. (These methods are in fact how the Enneagram pioneers acquired their knowledge of the types.) This chapter starts with gathering and sharing knowledge in general, and then moves on to talk about the type assessment interview and the panel interview in greater detail.
Sharing the (Knowledge) Wealth
From ancient philosophers to modern science, observation and reflection have been, and still are, the recognized methods for gaining knowledge. Biologists go into the field to observe nature, anthropologists travel the world (by way of organizations) to study how people live in groups, astronomers observe outer space, and so on. The main idea is this: Look, look, and look again. But observation alone isn’t enough. The philosophers also contemplated the thinking process itself and how one actually acquires knowledge.
Gathering knowledge in the narrative tradition
The monk Evagrius Ponticus (345-399 AD) was a scientist before the fact: He described how he explored the interior of the human mind. He regularly questioned other monks about their progress in the area of meditation and the obstacles they encountered. Using this qualitative study, he discovered the eight obstacles to peaceful meditation and labeled them vices, or emotionally charged thoughts. He observed that one monk was often disturbed by feelings of lust during his prayer, and another monk, more by pride. These vices are still differentiated in the Enneagram; they can even be considered cornerstones of the personality structure. The method used by Evagrius to acquire knowledge — namely, via interviews — is still practiced today when working with the Enneagram.
