Every pair appears once
Seven conditions create 21 unique pairs. Each condition therefore receives exactly six direct comparisons.
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This original work values test focuses on seven practical conditions of otherwise acceptable jobs. Compare every pair and inspect transparent wins, direct losses, exact ties, and cycles—without pretending to find one perfect job or a permanent work-values type.
What you receive
Seven win counts
Each condition faces every other condition exactly once.
Ties stay visible
No hidden array order or demographic rule creates a winner.
Direct head-to-head history
See what each condition beat and lost to.
Real-role experiments
Turn leading conditions into questions you can verify.
The method
Imagine choosing between otherwise acceptable jobs for the next one to two years. In each comparison, choose the workplace condition you would protect if you could keep only one. Answer for your present circumstances, not for an ideal employee or your entire future. Neither option is universally better.
Seven conditions create 21 unique pairs. Each condition therefore receives exactly six direct comparisons.
Every condition appears three times on the left and three times on the right. Strong side-click patterns are flagged and can withhold a lead.
A selected condition receives one win and the other one loss. Equal counts remain tied; cycles are reported rather than “fixed.”
The seven conditions
These are desired workplace conditions, not personality traits, moral values or claims about an employer. Read the complete card wording before each choice.
Enough discretion to choose how I approach the work and make day-to-day decisions close to the task.
Room to use your own judgment about methods, sequencing, and everyday decisions instead of needing approval for each move. It concerns practical discretion inside a role, not freedom from shared goals, laws, safety rules, or accountability.
Work that stretches my capabilities, provides useful feedback, and offers credible room to learn or take greater responsibility.
Access to learnable challenge, informative feedback, and opportunities to deepen capability or earn a wider remit. It concerns the conditions for development, not a promise of rapid promotion or proof of current ability.
A clear line between my effort and an outcome that is genuinely useful to customers, colleagues, communities, or the wider world.
Being able to understand who or what benefits from the work and how your contribution reaches that outcome. Usefulness can be direct or several steps away; visibility is not the same as importance.
Co-workers with whom I can share information, ask for help, disagree respectfully, and feel part of the work.
A working social environment with dependable exchange, respectful disagreement, mutual help, and enough belonging to participate honestly. It does not require constant collaboration or friendship with everyone.
Leaders and organizational systems that treat people respectfully and consistently, provide practical support when work gets difficult, and give relevant input a real chance to be heard.
An organizational relationship in which expectations and decisions are explained, treatment is reasonably consistent, leaders help remove obstacles, and informed input can matter. This broad condition does not audit whether an employer is objectively fair.
Dependable pay and continuity, with enough notice and clarity to plan my responsibilities outside work.
A reliable foundation: expected compensation arrives, the role has reasonable continuity, and material changes are communicated with enough clarity to plan. It is usable predictability, not a guarantee that change will never occur.
A manageable pace, humane boundaries, and enough flexibility or recovery to keep doing good work without running myself down.
Workload, scheduling, boundaries, and recovery conditions that make capable effort repeatable. Sustainability can include flexibility, predictable time off, realistic staffing, or control over pace; the exact form depends on the role and person.
Important boundary
Relative priorities among desired workplace conditions when otherwise acceptable options require trade-offs. The construct concerns stated conditions for the next one to two years, not the objective quality of an employer or the moral importance of work.
This original English form is research-informed but has not been tested for reliability, test–retest stability, construct validity, criterion validity or cross-cultural equivalence. It must not be used for hiring, screening, promotion or another high-impact decision.
Original content and source boundaries
The seven cards, definitions, interpretations, pair order, scoring implementation, response safeguards, and localization requirements in this file are original Ikigain product content. The primary studies below informed construct boundaries and design reasoning only. Their questionnaire wording, scoring keys, datasets, and norms are not reproduced.
Hackman, J. R., & Oldham, G. R. (1976). Motivation through the design of work: Test of a theory.
Conceptual lineage for decision latitude, feedback, learning, and task significance; no Job Diagnostic Survey items or formulas reused.
Open research sourceKarasek, R. A. (1979). Job Demands, Job Decision Latitude, and Mental Strain: Implications for Job Redesign.
Conceptual distinction between work demands and practical control; no survey items or health prediction implemented.
Open research sourceEisenberger, R., Huntington, R., Hutchison, S., & Sowa, D. (1986). Perceived organizational support.
Conceptual lineage for desired support; no SPOS item wording, scale, or organizational inference reused.
Open research sourceColquitt, J. A. (2001). On the dimensionality of organizational justice: A construct validation of a measure.
Construct-boundary reminder that fairness has multiple forms; no justice measure item or outcome model reused.
Open research sourceGrant, A. M. (2008). The significance of task significance: Job performance effects, relational mechanisms, and boundary conditions.
Research lineage for experienced usefulness and social impact; no performance prediction is made from this preference task.
Open research sourceThomas, L. T., & Ganster, D. C. (1995). Impact of family-supportive work variables on work-family conflict and strain: A control perspective.
Research lineage for schedule control and supportive conditions; no clinical or strain inference is implemented.
Open research sourceQuestions before you begin
Yes—this is an original work values test focused specifically on practical conditions of otherwise acceptable jobs, such as decision latitude, growth, stability, support, and sustainable rhythm. It reports the trade-offs in this answer set rather than assigning a permanent work-values type.
Work values describe conditions you want around paid or unpaid work. Personal values are broader priorities that can guide life across relationships, community, learning, and work. This test does not assume that a preferred work condition is one of your deepest life-wide values.
No. The retired O*NET Work Importance tools and the CareerOneStop Work Values Matcher are separate products with their own content and methods. Ikigain uses original condition cards, all 21 pairwise comparisons, and its own transparent scoring; it does not reproduce or claim equivalence to those instruments.
The trade-off is the information. Rating every desirable feature as important produces little separation. Every condition appears in six direct comparisons, so the result can show which conditions you protected when two useful features competed. A lower count never means you do not want that condition at all.
Do not use a forced comparison to erase a real non-negotiable. This exercise asks you to imagine two otherwise acceptable jobs that differ only in the conditions shown. If a real role fails a safety, pay, legal, health, care, or other essential floor, assess that problem separately before comparing preferences.
Yes. Equal win counts remain tied, including a possible seven-way tie. The scoring never uses card order to manufacture a winner. Pairwise choices can also form cycles; those are described as context-dependent trade-offs, not irrationality.
No. Use it to ask better questions of real roles: which decisions you would control, how learning happens, what support is observable, or how schedules work in practice. Interests, capabilities, access, responsibilities, pay and direct employer research remain separate evidence.
The flagship Ikigai experience integrates enjoyment, contribution, development, and practical support. This tool contributes one career-context lens and cannot calculate or replace purpose.
No. The complete free result is shown immediately. Progress uses the secure assessment service, with only a short-lived bounded retry copy when a save is interrupted; newsletter consent is separate.
Do not auto-translate and publish duplicate forms. Each locale requires a separately versioned native adaptation of every card and interpretation, bilingual construct review, cognitive interviews with local users, review of employment assumptions and sensitive terms, verification of all 21 pair memberships and balanced displayed positions, and a new claims review. Cross-language score comparisons require evidence of measurement equivalence; they are prohibited by default.
Ready to compare?
The complete result is free, no email is required, and secure progress saving keeps the exact versioned attempt separate from newsletter consent.