Current evidence status
The Forest Journey is a development-candidate educational assessment. Its six reporting dimensions draw on recognizable trait domains, but the custom scenarios and scoring rules have not yet completed expert content review, cognitive interviewing, reliability studies, structural validation, fairness analysis, or norming. The product therefore does not call the instrument validated or reliable.
A familiar construct does not automatically validate a new question, story context, scoring rule, or interpretation.
What is measured
The journey contains 36 core scored items: six indicators each for Curiosity & Openness, Structure & Follow-Through, Social Energy & Assertiveness, Cooperation & Compassion, Emotional Responsiveness, and Agency Under Uncertainty. Eight additional response moments control narrative callbacks or clearly limited values and work-interest previews.
How a scale is calculated
- Each scored option has a fixed key of −2, −1, +1, or +2 for one primary dimension.
- A scale is displayed only when at least four of its six indicators are answered.
- The answered-item mean is transformed from −2…+2 to a 0…100 display scale.
- The display scale is grouped into provisional descriptive bands.
The values are not percentiles. There is no reference population, rank, hidden AI interpretation, response-time scoring, or adaptive difficulty in V1. Skipped responses are missing; they are never replaced with neutral guesses.
Patterns, titles, and previews
Contextual patterns and the narrative archetype are selected by deterministic rules from available display scales. A title is a summary prompt, not a personality type. The Market token choice is an ipsative priority preview within one scenario. The Workshop activity is a single-choice interest preview. Neither is a complete values or vocational assessment.
Versioning and transparency
Assessment content, scoring logic, result copy, and browser-storage schema have separate versions. Every result receives a deterministic reference hash over its semantic result data. The client-side scoring key is inspectable; V1 treats that as a transparency tradeoff and does not claim weights are secret or tamper-proof.
Planned validation sequence
The planned sequence is construct and option review, diverse cognitive interviews, accessibility and cinematic/Focus Mode comparison, usability work, a pre-registered psychometric pilot, internal-structure analysis, relationships with established measures, test–retest work, fairness analysis, and consequences review. Any material item or scoring change creates a new version.
Reference frameworks
- International Personality Item Pool — public resources for personality construct and item research.
- Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing — a framework for evaluating intended interpretations and uses.
- O*NET licensing resources — relevant only to any future, separate vocational instrument.