- What is a chronotype?
- A chronotype is your natural disposition for when you sleep, wake, and feel mentally sharp. It's the technical term for "morning person vs. night owl." Chronotype is partly inherited — genes like PER3 and CLOCK shift the timing of your internal circadian rhythm — and partly shaped by age, light exposure, and lifestyle. Most adults are intermediate. About 10–15% lean strongly toward morning; about 10–15% lean strongly toward evening.
- What is the MEQ?
- The Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire was created by James Horne and Olov Östberg in 1976 and published in the International Journal of Chronobiology. It has 19 questions about preferred wake times, energy peaks, sleep timing, appetite on waking, and self-rated type. Each answer carries a published point value; the total ranges from 16 to 86 and maps to five chronotype bands. The MEQ has been validated in dozens of studies across decades and is still the most widely used self-report chronotype instrument in research.
- How accurate is a 19-question self-report quiz?
- More accurate than you'd guess, but not perfect. MEQ scores correlate well with biological markers like dim-light melatonin onset (DLMO), the gold-standard physiological measure of circadian phase. They also correlate with body temperature minimums and cortisol awakening curves. That said, any single quiz on any single day is a snapshot. Stress, recent travel, shift work, illness, and even the season can push your answers around. If you want a more stable read, take the quiz twice a week apart and average the scores.
- Can my chronotype change?
- Yes, in two ways. First, slowly with age — most teenagers shift evening (this is the biology behind "teens can't get up for school"), then gradually shift back toward morning through their 30s, 40s, and 50s. Second, with deliberate light exposure: bright light in the morning pulls your clock earlier, bright light at night pushes it later. You can shift by about an hour or two with consistent effort. You can't shift by four hours through willpower.
- What's the difference between chronotype and sleep need?
- Chronotype is when you sleep; sleep need is how much you need. They're independent. A definite morning type might need 7 hours; a definite evening type might also need 7. Or either could need 9. The MEQ doesn't measure sleep duration — it only measures timing preference. If you want to know your sleep need, the simplest test is to sleep without an alarm for 10–14 days in a row and see what your body settles on.
- I scored evening but I'm forced to work mornings. What do I do?
- You're in good company — researchers call this "social jet lag," the gap between your body's clock and your alarm clock. The most-evidence-based mitigations: get bright light (sun or a 10,000-lux therapy lamp) within 30 minutes of waking, keep wake time consistent even on weekends, avoid bright screens for an hour before bed, and consider a small (0.3–0.5 mg) melatonin dose 5–6 hours before your target bedtime. If your work has any flexibility on start time, taking it pays dividends in mood and productivity.
- Are night owls less healthy than morning people?
- Some observational studies have found that evening types have slightly higher rates of certain metabolic and mood conditions. But it's hard to untangle whether that's the chronotype itself or the social-jet-lag stress of living an evening clock in a morning-clock world. Studies of night-shift workers (forced evening schedule) confound this further. The strongest version of the finding: chronotype mismatch is bad for health; the chronotype itself probably isn't.
- How does this differ from the Munich ChronoType Questionnaire (MCTQ)?
- The MEQ asks about preferences ("what time would you get up if free to choose?"). The MCTQ asks about actual sleep behavior on work days vs. free days, and computes your chronotype from those. They correlate strongly. The MEQ is older, more widely cited, and simpler to score; the MCTQ is younger, more behavioral, and arguably more accurate. Both are valid. This quiz uses the MEQ because it's the one with 50 years of validation behind it.
- Is my quiz data saved or sent anywhere?
- No. Everything runs in your browser. Your answers and your score never leave the page. We don't have a database of who scored what; we couldn't email it to you even if you asked.
