The COGIATI test is a subject that comes up from time to time. No, it has nothing to do with being registered to service your boiler. That’s called ‘Gas Safe’ these days.
I’ll link to it at the bottom, but please read this before you do, so that you don’t take the results without a massive pinch of salt. If you feel you need counselling for your gender identity, or you’re contemplating hormones or surgery, don’t let a score on a webpage tell you what’s right or wrong for you.
The first issue with the COGIATI is that it relies heavily on gender stereotypes. Women are rubbish at maths and spacial awareness, while men are rubbish at noticing and remembering details. Does anyone else have a problem with this? But that’s really just the tip of the iceberg. You would expect more relevant questions to carry more weight, but they don’t. For example, surely whether or not you identify as transsexual is more important than whether or not you’re any good at parking a car.
But the whole thing is written in HTML, and the scores are there for all to see if you view the page source. (Try it. You don’t really need to understand HTML to see what’s going on.) For each question, the most masculine answer scores -10, the most feminine scores 10, and other answers score -5, 0 or 5. It’s the same for every one of the 65 questions. The final score is simply the total of all selected answers. I initially thought there might be something clever in the post-processing, but selecting the first answer to every question scores -90 – exactly what you get if you add up the values for each of those answers in the HTML.
So, while identifying as a transsexual will earn you 10 points, you will lose those 10 points for being able to parallel park. If you still think that’s a sound basis for determining your gender identity, then by all means take the test seriously. If not, then click and have a laugh.
