Exact score explanation

What a Rice Purity Test score of 85 means

85 = 100 − 15 checked

The short answer

A Rice Purity Test score of 85 means exactly 15 of the 100 items on the checklist were checked, leaving 85 unchecked. That works out to 15% of the checklist checked and 85% unchecked, because the checklist happens to hold exactly 100 items.

The result sits in the 7–23 checked band (a small share checked), which covers scores 77–93. The band is a navigation aid for this scale — it is not a percentile, a population comparison, or a statement about the person who took the test.

Score 85 at a glance

Score	85 out of 100
Items checked	15 items
Items left unchecked	85
Share of checklist checked	15%
Descriptive band	7–23 checked · A small share checked
Scores sharing this band	77–93 (17 scores)
Formula	100 − 15 = 85

Score position

This scale shows the score itself, not a population distribution or percentile.

0 score · 100 checked100 score · 0 checked

Score

Items checked

7–23 checked

Descriptive band

Exact calculation: 100 − 15 = 85

Where 85 sits between the bands

Between 7 and 23 of the 100 items were checked, leaving most of the checklist unchecked. This is the widest band in the upper half of the scale: it spans 17 different scores, so two people in the same band can be as much as 16 checked items apart.

9 fewer checked items would raise the score to 94 and move it into the 3–6 checked band.
9 more checked items would lower the score to 76 and move it into the 24–55 checked band.

Why 85 cannot identify your answers

Choosing which 15 of 100 items to check can be done in about 2.53 × 10^17 different ways, and every one of them totals 85. The score is a cardinality — a count — so it discards which items were selected the moment it is calculated.

For the same reason the total cannot show the context behind an answer, distinguish "no" from "preferred not to answer", or say anything definitive about a person's character, health, or safety.

How 15 checked items maps onto the checklist

The 100 items are grouped into five categories: Sexual (56), Social & Dating (15), Substances (14), Legal (11) and Academic (4). Those fixed sizes make some arithmetic statements about a total provable.

Minimum categories involved: One. 15 checked items fit inside the largest single category (Sexual, 56 items), so a score of 85 could in principle come from one category alone.

One possible distribution: every Academic item (4) plus every Legal item (11). That is an illustration of the arithmetic only — many other distributions give the identical total of 85, and this site never sees which items anyone checked.

Questions about a score of 85

What does a Rice Purity Test score of 85 mean?

A score of 85 means 15 of the 100 checklist items were checked and 85 were left unchecked. The score is the subtraction 85 = 100 − 15 checked, and nothing more is inferred from it.

How many questions did I answer yes to if I scored 85?

15 questions. Every checked item removes exactly one point from the starting total of 100, so the number of checked items is always 100 minus the score.

Is 85 a good Rice Purity Test score?

There is no good or bad score. 85 is a count of unchecked items on one particular 100-item checklist. This site does not publish a population average or percentile because it holds no documented representative dataset to support one.

Which questions produce a Rice Purity Test score of 85?

The score cannot identify them. There are about 2.53 × 10^17 different ways to check 15 of the 100 items, and every one of them totals 85, so the number alone never reveals which items were selected.

What a Rice Purity Test score of 85 means

The short answer

Score 85 at a glance

Score position

Where 85 sits between the bands

Why 85 cannot identify your answers

How 15 checked items maps onto the checklist

Questions about a score of 85

How the score is calculated

Methodology and sources

See all 100 questions

Take or retake the test