Identifying which group is the best fit for you involves comparing your answers to those from the typology groups defined using our national survey of 10,221 Americans (including 8,710 registered voters). See here for a methodological description of how we created the typology groups.
For the 20 questions on the quiz used in defining the typology groups, we calculate how closely your responses match the response pattern of the typical member of each of the nine typology groups. We then use those calculations to find the group that you are closest to, overall.
Most people, but not all, are good fits for their group. Some patterns of responses to the values questions just do not match up well with any of the groups. The procedure will assign everyone to the group that fits them best, even if they are not a very good fit with any of the groups. And some people may actually be a good fit for more than one group, since some of the groups are quite similar in many of their views. If you feel like you are on the edge of your group and another, you very well may be! In addition, the quiz includes only 20 of the 27 items used to define the political typology groups in the report for the sake of keeping the quiz (a little) shorter. These 20 items do a good job identifying your group, but are not quite as precise as if we had used the full 27 questions from the model in the quiz.
If you feel you do not fit well with the group you are assigned to, that does not mean there is anything wrong with your responses. Your set of values may just be unique!
