Culture index survey: How it works, the 7 traits and 50 questions

What is a culture index survey?

A culture index survey most often means the Culture Index assessment, a behavioral survey from Culture Index Inc. that maps one person's work style. HR teams also use the term for an employee culture survey that measures how a workforce experiences its culture. The first profiles individuals and the second reads teams, so confirm which is meant.

For hiring or coaching, use the assessment. To learn whether teams trust leaders and feel included, use a culture survey; see our guide to the workplace culture survey.

Picking the wrong tool gets you the wrong answer: trait profiles say nothing about trust or inclusion, so teams act on the wrong problem.

Why culture is worth measuring at all:

How does the Culture Index survey work?

The Culture Index survey, also called the Culture Index test or assessment, is an adjective checklist with two sections of 174 words each. Section one asks which words describe you. Section two asks which words describe how you must behave to succeed in your current role. It takes about 8 to 10 minutes, and a trained analyst reads the results as a pattern of seven traits.

1. 01

   Two adjective lists

   The person ticks any words that apply. Section one is about themselves; section two is how their role asks them to behave.

2. 02

   A role benchmark

   Employers can define a role's needs with Culture Index's C-Job questionnaire and compare people against it.

3. 03

   Trained interpretation

   Culture Index limits access to results to people with formal training in the survey.

Sources: Culture Index psychometrics; Trail of Bits.

What are the seven Culture Index traits?

The Culture Index measures seven traits: Autonomy (A), Social Ability (B), Pace or Patience (C), Conformity (D), Energy Units (EU), Logic (L) and Ingenuity (I). Each describes a work tendency, such as initiative, need for interaction or attention to detail. Trained analysts read the traits together as a pattern, so no single trait is good or bad.

Trait C appears as both Pace and Patience in Culture Index material.

Sources: trait names from Culture Index; plain descriptions as summarized by Trail of Bits and Lilach Bullock.

What are the Culture Index patterns?

Culture Index patterns, often called culture index personality types, are named profiles for people whose seven traits fall in a similar shape. Two third-party guides each list 17 patterns, and one sorts them into four groups: Visionaries, Organizers, Researchers and Socially-oriented. Culture Index does not publish the full list on its public site, so treat any summary as a starting point.

Solid names appear in two independent guides; dashed names appear in one.

Sources: HIGH5 and Trail of Bits. Group names come from HIGH5.

How does the Culture Index compare with the Predictive Index and DISC?

The Culture Index, the Predictive Index and DISC all describe how a person tends to behave at work, but the formats differ. The Culture Index and the Predictive Index both use adjective lists for self and role, while DISC asks about 80 adaptive questions and reports four styles. None measures how employees experience a culture.

Sources: Culture Index; Predictive Index and Reference Profiles; What is DiSC? and Everything DiSC.

What can the Culture Index not tell you about your culture?

The Culture Index cannot tell you how employees experience your culture. It describes how one person tends to work, while trust in a manager and feeling included sit outside its scope. Those questions need an anonymous survey by team.

A set of profiles shows the mix of work styles on a team, the visible layer in the iceberg model of culture. Most culture metrics come from how people experience work, so a team can hold every pattern and still lack a high-performance culture.

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“If you really wanna be a differentiator, you need to clearly articulate what is your culture? What problem are you aiming to solve? Because that’ll really help to articulate what your employee value proposition is.”

How do you use the Culture Index and an employee culture survey together?

Use the Culture Index for individual role fit and coaching, and an anonymous employee culture survey for how teams experience the culture. Never join named profiles to survey answers. Act on the gaps the survey shows, with HR owning the process and team leads owning each action.

We call this the Two-Lens Method: the Culture Index is the individual lens and the culture survey is the team lens.

CultureMonkey's Two-Lens Method

1. 01

   Write down the culture you want, as behaviors

   CHRO or People leadership with the executive teamWeeks 1 to 2

   Turn each value into two or three visible actions. This guide on how to describe your company culture helps.

2. 02

   Use the Culture Index only where it fits

   Talent acquisition with a trained analystOngoing

   Use it for role fit, coaching and team design, never as the only hiring signal.

3. 03

   Run an anonymous employee culture survey

   People OpsTwice a year

   Add a quarterly pulse survey on one or two focus areas, and keep item wording fixed between waves.

4. 04

   Report by team, apart from profiles

   HR analyticsWithin a week of close

   Show results only for groups above the anonymity minimum. Never load profiles next to survey answers.

5. 05

   Act on one area per team

   Team lead with the HRBPWithin 2 weeks of close

   Pick one area, log one action with an owner and date through action planning, and re-pulse about 90 days later.

What mistakes should you avoid when using both?

• Joining named profiles to survey answers, which can expose people in small groups.

• Reading a set of trait profiles as a measure of culture.

• Using one trait pattern to filter candidates.

Should you use the Culture Index for hiring?

Use the Culture Index in hiring as one input, never the deciding one. Culture Index itself says results should never be used alone to predict job success, and hiring research ranks structured interviews among the strongest predictors of performance. Pair any trait assessment with a structured interview, a written role benchmark and a legal review.

r runs from 0 to 1; higher means a closer link to rated job performance.

Sources: cognitive ability from Sackett et al., Journal of Applied Psychology, 2024; other rows from Sackett et al., Journal of Applied Psychology, 2022, the newest estimates for those methods.

1. Give everyone applying for the same role the same assessment at the same stage.
2. Train the people who read results, and never coach a candidate.
3. Have counsel review the process. In the US, the EEOC applies Title VII and the ADA to employment tests. This is general information, not legal advice.

If a team wants to screen for culture fit, test values in the structured interview.

What should you look for in a culture survey tool?

A culture survey tool should keep answers anonymous, map questions to drivers you can benchmark, report by team and turn results into tracked actions. A trait assessment does none of this, so test each point in a demo using your own org structure.

• Anonymity thresholds that stay on
• Questions mapped to drivers with benchmarks
• Reports by team, manager and location
• Survey-to-survey comparison
• Comment analysis in context
• Action plans with owners and status

To compare vendors on these points, see our guide to employee engagement survey tools.