For teachers
Use the DNA Scan in your classroom
A free political quiz with no accounts and no email. Most students finish in 10 to 15 minutes. Each student gets a political archetype on four axes, and you get the class’s results: where the room sits, which types it holds, and which statements split it. Never anyone’s own answers.
- About 4 minutes
- 32 questions
- Free
- No sign-up
Class results
See your class’s results without seeing anyone’s
Create a class and you get a short student link, a class code for the board, and a class view that fills in with the room’s totals as students finish. Post the link to Google Classroom, Teams, Remind or your LMS, or put the join screen, with its QR code, on the projector.
- Where the room sitsThe class average on each axis, drawn as one signature, with how many students fall in each part of the scale.
- Types in the roomHow many students landed in each family, and every type at least two students share.
- What split the classThe statements the class divided on most, agreed on most and hesitated on most, and the count for all 32.
- Ready for the projectorA full-screen view shows the link and class code while students start, counts them as they finish, then shows the results.
- Nobody’s own answersTotals appear once five students have finished. Students are told what you will see before they start.
A 45-minute lesson
Predict, take it, compare, argue the other side
Predict
Before anyone starts, each student writes down where they expect to land: left or right, and whether they think of themselves as more for individual liberty or for order and rules.
Take the Scan
Present the join screen: students open the short link, or open the Scan and type the class code. Most finish in 10 to 15 minutes, and the count on the screen rises as they do. Early finishers can read about their archetype. Anyone the bell interrupts can pick up where they left off next lesson on the same device.
Compare
Switch the screen to the results and start with the statement that split the room, or the one the class hesitated on. Then in pairs: where did each result match the prediction? Each student picks one axis and makes the strongest case for the end they did not land on.
Exit ticket
One sentence: something the quiz got right about me, or something it missed.
Sharing a result should be an invitation, not a requirement. Political views are personal, and some students will not want theirs known. The prediction step and the other-side step work without anyone showing their result.
Discussion
Questions that work in a mixed room
- Which question was hardest to answer? What made both options reasonable?
- Where did your result differ from your prediction? What might explain the gap?
- Two people can vote for the same party and land on different archetypes. How can that be?
- Pick one axis. What is the best argument for the end you did not land on?
- What does a four-axis quiz leave out about how people form their political views?
- Would you answer any question differently in ten years? Which one, and why?
What it measures
Four axes instead of left and right
The 32 questions are trade-offs with no obviously right answer. Each answer moves the student on four axes at once, and the full pattern is matched to one of 32 political archetypes in eight families. It does not ask about parties, candidates or current bills.
- Liberty
- How much room should individuals have against the state and each other?
- Economy
- How far should markets be left alone, and how far steered toward equality?
- Nation
- Do loyalty and policy run first to the country, or to international cooperation?
- Culture
- Should inherited institutions be preserved, or changed?
Going further
If you have a second class period
Compare with a historical figure
Students set their result beside 109 historical thinkers and leaders, from Aristotle and Locke to Lincoln and Reagan, and see the nearest common ground and the widest divide.
Open ExploreTrace the ideas
Every archetype links to the traditions and thinkers behind it, each with a short biography.
Browse the lineageLook up your members of Congress
For a civics class: enter a school or home address to find the district, see who is on the November 3 ballot, and compare members’ recorded votes with the statements students answered.
Who is my representative?Test civic knowledge
DNA Civics is a separate quiz on how government works, which also asks how sure you are of each answer.
Try DNA Civics
Student privacy
What students see, and what we keep
No account, name or email.
A student gets a full result without signing up. Answers are stored under a random share code and an anonymous device identifier, not under a name.
Optional extras appear after the result.
The result page asks how well the result fits, with an optional follow-up when it does not. It also offers an emailed copy of the result, with an unticked box to join our research panel, and a paid Deep Reading. None of these is needed for the result. PoliticalDNA is a for-profit, independent company, so we would rather you know this before class: students can skip all of them.
Class views show totals only.
You see how many students finished, the class averages, the families and shared types, and how the class split on each statement, once five students have finished. Never a student’s own result, answers, share code or name. Students see this on the Scan before they start.
Ages 13 and up.
PoliticalDNA is for ages 13 and up.
Analytics, not answers.
We record page visits and product events such as “started the Scan.” Individual answers are never sent to analytics. On result pages, scrolling and clicks may be recorded to improve the page, with anything typed masked. Browsers that send Do Not Track load no analytics at all.
Research use is de-identified.
Response patterns inform research only after identifiers are removed, and findings are published in aggregate. We never sell data or use it for political advertising or campaigns.
Deletion on request.
A student, parent or teacher can email support@politicaldna.org with a share code to have that result deleted. You can delete a class view yourself at any time.
No agreements with schools.
We don’t sign data privacy agreements, contracts or vendor forms with schools or districts. The Scan is offered as it is, under our privacy policy. If your school requires a signed agreement for classroom tools, check with it before using the Scan with students.
The full terms are in the privacy policy. Questions about using the Scan with a class go to support@politicaldna.org.
Questions
Common questions
Is it free for classroom use?
Yes. The Scan, the result, the archetype pages and the comparison tools are free. The only paid products are optional readings written from a student’s answers afterwards, and no part of a lesson needs one.
Is it partisan?
No. PoliticalDNA takes no position on parties or candidates, and the Scan asks about trade-offs rather than parties. Each of the 32 archetypes is described in its own terms, with no ranking.
What grades is it for?
High school and college. PoliticalDNA is for ages 13 and up.
Can I see my class’s results?
Yes, as totals. Create a class and share the student link. Your class view shows the class averages, the families and shared types, and how the class split on each of the 32 statements, once five students have finished. It never shows a student’s own result or answers, and students are told this before they start.
Do I need an account to create a class?
No. Creating a class gives you a private link to your class view. This browser remembers the classes you create, and you can email the link to yourself, but there is no account behind it: a lost link can’t be recovered, though you can create a new class in seconds. You can close a class to new results or delete it from the class view.
I teach several periods. One class or several?
One for each period. Each gets its own code and its own totals, so you can compare how the discussions went. The class view has a one-step “create another” for the next period.
Do students need the link?
No. They can open politicaldna.org/dna-scan/, choose “Have a class code?” and type the six-character code. The short link, politicaldna.org/c/ followed by the code, works too, and fits on a board.
What if the bell rings before everyone finishes?
A student who opened the Scan with your class can pick up where they left off during the next day and a half on the same device, and their result still counts. Only finished Scans count, and totals appear once five students have finished.
Will you sign our district’s data privacy agreement?
No. We don’t sign data privacy agreements, contracts or vendor forms with schools or districts. Students need no account, and we don’t collect their names, emails or student IDs. If your school requires a signed agreement for classroom tools, check with it before using the Scan.
How accurate is it?
It is one model of political identity, not a verdict. The four-axis structure is empirically grounded, and the result is a best match, not a label a student has to accept. The methodology pages show how it is built and what it cannot measure.
What if students share one computer?
Results are saved in the browser, so on a shared device each student should note their share code, shown on the result page, before the next student starts. Each student’s result counts toward the class separately. A student retaking the Scan on the same device can tick “I’ve taken this with the class before” so their earlier answers are replaced rather than counted twice.
Try it before your students do.
Take the Scan yourself so you know every question they will see. Most adults finish in about four minutes, and it needs no account.