Personality tests can be as dorky as teen magazine quizzes challenging your relationship IQ.

But on some Internet sites, people take these tests seriously, and some psychologists say they can.

Queendom.com is one site that offers tests written by professionals who can help people understand the psychological difficulties they are facing.

“We want to get people some pointers for self-assessments and trying to understand themselves,” said the site’s director, Ilona Jerabek.

Internet testing can’t really fix what’s broken, but it can help, she said.

“There are inherent limitations to online testing,” she said. “It can’t fix all people’s problems. It can give them some springboard to reflection on what their problem might be.”

Much of the rest of online personality tests are more teenage magazine than psychological journal.

TheSpark.com poses questions such as “When exactly will a person die?”, “What sort of rear end do you have?” and “How pure are you?”

Telecommunication senior Anne Gabriel said she’d ventured into the world of personality tests, but came away only entertained.

“The ones I’ve taken were just like ‘Are you and your boyfriend the perfect fit?’ or something,” Gabriel said. “Me and my friends laughed about them. I just think they’re kind of fun sometimes.”

TheSpark.com is a good example of purely fun online tests.

Millions have taken tests on the site determining when they’ll marry, how much of a jerk they are, or how wealthy they will become.

The tests consist of a battery of yes-and-no and few short answer questions. Then the site spits out a percentage based on the answers.

In addition to questions, TheSpark also lets respondents see how they rank compared to others.

The site provides a summary of other participants’ answers. For instance, out of the 6,461,499 responses to the “Purity Test,” 93 percent had held hands, 53 percent smoked marijuana, 61 percent had sex and 23 percent intentionally burned themselves. On the “Death Test,” the average life expectancy was 67 years old.

Psychology senior Lauren Coe said she’s encountered such tests and had fun with them.

“They’re interesting, but they don’t really reflect the real person,” Coe said. “They’re just for laughs, I guess. They didn’t make any difference in how I think about myself.”

Other Web sites have tests claiming to rate how a respondent would do if thrown into a time warp in the 14th century and whether the respondent fits into the categories of “Smoker,” “Joker” or perhaps “Midnight Toker.”

Queendom.com is in a different class than these sites. The site separates itself from the pack both in intent and with what psychologists call “validity data.”

The site backs up its tests by tracking how well they work and posting the results for all to see.

“If you click on the ‘see stats’ button, there is a link to the validity date,” Jerabek said. “We run quite extensive studies on (the tests) with over 100,000 subjects.”

The tests on this site are consistently improved, Jerabek said.

“We take developing of the tests very seriously and we do a lot of updating based on the validity data. We study them to see that they work and we go and change it accordingly.”

The tests also can’t provide help to a person the way a psychologist could.

“It doesn’t replace the help of a psychologist,” Jerabek said. “It’s intended for people who may have some problems but can work on them by themselves.”

Jerabek said her site is rare in this.

“I haven’t seen any other tests online that show their validation data,” she said.

She said her site hasn’t had any problems with being taken seriously.

“I think the majority of people do take this seriously,” Jerabek said. “There are a number of professionals who use this in their offices.”

Accounting senior Vince Oliverio, however, said he didn’t believe the tests were useful at all.

“I think they’re pretty pointless,” he said. “I don’t think you can know anything about a person’s personality from yes-and-no questions.”

A psychologist might argue this point with Oliverio. Some psychologists consider personality tests useful, psychology Professor Bertram Karon said.

“Sometimes they can be useful, depending on how valid the test is, if there is some research and most psychologists have concluded it’s a good idea,” Karon said.

“It depends on which test for which purpose. Some of the tests would require a very well-trained psychologist to interpret them.”

But it all depends on the test.

“There are personality tests that are very accurate and there are personality tests that are utterly worthless,” Karon said. “Any real psychologist is always going to ask, ‘What is the data?’”

The tests on TheSpark may be fun, but anyone planning his or her life around their truth is in for a surprise.

“Most psychologists would be very skeptical that they predict anything,” Karon said. “One should take these, not with a grain of salt, but with huge chunks of salt.”