Cèrcol maps team personality using the Big Five (OCEAN) via the IPIP public-domain item pool (Goldberg et al. 2006). 12 team roles are derived from the AB5C circumplex (Hofstee, De Raad & Goldberg 1992) and the team composition literature (Bell 2007; Neuman & Wright 1999).
"Tot suma, ningú no és imprescindible, però tots som necessaris."
| Feature | Cèrcol | Belbin | DISC | StrengthsFinder |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Based on Big Five (OCEAN) | ✓ | — | — | — |
| Items: public domain (IPIP) | ✓ | — | — | — |
| Scoring pipeline: published & auditable | ✓ | — | — | — |
| Peer assessment (forced-choice) | ✓ | partial | — | — |
| Blind spot detection (self vs peer) | ✓ | — | — | — |
| Free instruments available | ✓ | — | — | — |
| Open source | ✓ | — | — | — |
| 6 languages incl. Catalan | ✓ | — | — | — |
Cèrcol's peer assessment (Witness Cèrcol) uses forced-choice adjective selection — the assessor picks one best-fit and one worst-fit adjective per round from a set covering all five OCEAN factors. Forced choice eliminates social desirability bias that corrupts Likert-scale peer ratings. Up to 12 Witnesses per subject; scores are averaged. Divergence > 0.8 SD between self and peer on any dimension is flagged as a blind spot.
| Phase | Instrument | Items | Time | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🌑 | New Moon Cèrcol (TIPI-based) | 10 | ~2 min | Free |
| 🌓 | First Quarter Cèrcol (IPIP-NEO-60) | 60 | ~10 min | Free |
| 🌕 | Full Moon Cèrcol (IPIP-NEO-120 + Witness + ICAR g) | 120+ | ~25 min | One-time payment |
| 🌗 | Last Quarter Cèrcol (team report) | — | — | Planned |
New Moon and First Quarter are always free — no account required, no payment, no card. Full Moon produces a definitive role result, Witness peer assessment, and team report.
| Cèrcol name | Big Five / OCEAN | What it reflects |
|---|---|---|
| Presence | Extraversion (E) | Energy in a room; initiative vs listening |
| Bond | Agreeableness (A) | Cohesion vs productive confrontation |
| Vision | Openness to Experience (O) | Innovation vs pragmatism |
| Discipline | Conscientiousness (C) | Structure, reliability, follow-through |
| Depth | Neuroticism (N) | Emotional range and intensity |
No score is good or bad. Each reflects a tendency. Both ends of every dimension are functional in the right team context.
Roles are derived from intersections of three balance dimensions (Presence × Bond × Vision) at both poles, following the AB5C circumplex (Hofstee et al. 1992). Discipline and Depth modulate how each role is expressed.
| Role | Profile | One-line essence |
|---|---|---|
| Dolphin | P+ B+ | When you're in the room, people talk — because you made it easy. |
| Wolf | P+ B− | You don't wait for permission. The team moves because you don't stay quiet. |
| Elephant | P− B+ | You don't take up space — you create it. People explain themselves beside you. |
| Owl | P− B− | You see what others miss because you don't need to be at the centre. |
| Eagle | P+ V+ | You see far and you move there. You bring the team to places it wouldn't go alone. |
| Falcon | P+ V− | Not vision — timing. You know exactly when to move. |
| Octopus | P− V+ | The team's best ideas often passed through you first, in silence. |
| Tortoise | P− V− | You won't make noise. But when you're not there, the team drifts. |
| Bee | B+ V+ | Where others see chaos, you see structure. |
| Bear | B+ V− | You don't change under pressure. That knowing frees others to take risks. |
| Fox | B− V+ | You see what doesn't add up — in ideas and relationships. |
| Badger | B− V− | You're not interested in what should work. You're interested in what works. |
No role is better or worse than another. No role is universally necessary. Every role is necessary in some team configurations.
All items come from the IPIP (International Personality Item Pool) — a public-domain collection of personality items with no licence restrictions for commercial or non-commercial use (Goldberg et al. 2006). Items are selected by highest confirmatory factor loadings from published validation studies.
The 12 roles follow the AB5C circumplex structure (Hofstee et al. 1992), which organises personality as intersections of OCEAN factor pairs. The selection of Presence (E), Bond (A), and Vision (O) as balance dimensions requiring team-level representation at both poles is grounded in Bell (2007) and Neuman & Wright (1999).
- The personality measurement is valid and replicable (IPIP items, published norms)
- The role definitions follow a principled scientific framework (AB5C)
- The team balance descriptions are logical derivations, not arbitrary design
- That roles predict team performance (no direct evidence for this specific model)
- That the theoretical centroids are empirically correct (validation at N≥300 planned)
- That every team needs all 12 roles
Full scientific documentation: SCIENCE.md
| Language | Scientific basis |
|---|---|
| English | IPIP source items (ipip.ori.org) |
| Danish | Vedel, Gøtzsche-Astrup & Holm (2018) — peer-reviewed IPIP-NEO-120 validation, Nordic Psychology |
| French | Thiry & Piolti (2023) — peer-reviewed IPIP adaptation, University of Mons |
| Spanish | Cupani et al. (2014) precedent — IPIP-NEO-60 validation in Spanish-speaking populations |
| German | Ostendorf & Angleitner (1994) — five-factor replication in German-speaking populations |
| Catalan | Direct translation following IPIP methodology; no published CA validation exists |
- Barrick, M. R., & Mount, M. K. (1991). The Big Five personality dimensions and job performance. Personnel Psychology, 44(1), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.1991.tb00688.x
- Bell, S. T. (2007). Deep-level composition variables as predictors of team performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(3), 595–615. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.92.3.595
- Goldberg, L. R. et al. (2006). The International Personality Item Pool and the future of public-domain personality measures. Journal of Research in Personality, 40, 84–96. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2005.08.007
- Hofstee, W. K. B., De Raad, B., & Goldberg, L. R. (1992). Integration of the Big Five and circumplex approaches to trait structure. JPSP, 63, 146–163. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.63.1.146
- Maples-Keller, J. L. et al. (2019). Using item response theory to develop a 60-item representation of the NEO PI-R using the IPIP. Psychological Assessment, 31(2), 188–203. https://doi.org/10.1037/pas0000544
- Neuman, G. A., & Wright, J. (1999). Team effectiveness: Beyond skills and cognitive ability. Journal of Applied Psychology, 84(3), 376–389. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.84.3.376
- Vedel, A., Gøtzsche-Astrup, O., & Holm, P. (2018). The Danish IPIP-NEO-120. Nordic Psychology, 71(1), 62–77. https://doi.org/10.1080/19012276.2018.1470108
Full item pool: https://ipip.ori.org
No account required for any instrument. No personal data collected during assessment.
Anonymous scores are logged: instrument name, language, five domain z-scores. Nothing that identifies you. Account creation is optional (saves result history and unlocks Full Moon features). Data is stored on our own servers (Hetzner Online GmbH). No third-party analytics.
- Frontend: React + Vite → GitHub Pages (cercol.team)
- Backend: FastAPI + PostgreSQL 14 → Hetzner VPS (api.cercol.team)
- Auth: Self-hosted (magic link via Resend, password/bcrypt, Google OAuth)
- Scoring: 100% client-side JavaScript (no data sent to server during assessment)
Now: New Moon, First Quarter, and Full Moon are live. Witness peer assessment is live. Next: Last Quarter Cèrcol — team-level instrument built on accumulated real data.
No dates. No promises. Just the order things need to happen in.
Full roadmap: ROADMAP.md
Contributions are welcome: bug reports, translation fixes, accessibility improvements, new language support. Open an issue before opening a pull request.
MIT