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This program is a computerised version of the book of the same name by Hans Eysenck and Glenn Wilson, published ten years ago, although only three of the book's six tests are included on this software.

These tests are said to measure respectively your extroversion/introversion factor, your emotional stability and your tough/tendermindedness quotient.

Each test consists of seventy questions, to which you respond 1, 2 or 3 according to yes/no/can't decide. When you've answered the questions the results are shown in bar chart form, together with background comments abuot your various characteristics, and can be stored on tape or sent to a printer.

By an odd coincidence I had a copy of the book with the tests completed. So I was able to compare my answers now with those of ten years ago and they were almost identical.

The computer is certainly a much faster and easier vehicle for doing the housekeeping than the book, where a cumbersome system of ticking off the answers, adding your scores and making your own marks on the graphics is called for (if, unlike me, it doesn't take you 35 attempts before the program loads, that is!) and the bar graphs are well presented.

The questions have been reproduced absolutely faithfully from the book and no attempt made to clear up amiguities in the original - how do you interpret 'Do you like enteraining people', for example? I noticed that ten years ago I answered 'No' to the question 'Do you always wear a seatbelt?' whereas this time round I answered 'Yes'. The reason is nothing to do with my attitude to seatbelts changing, merely that the law has changed in the intervening period and I don't want to get prosecuted by the police! Nevertheless, there are enough questions to answer in each test without your response to individual cases affecting the overall picture too much.

Psychologists, for obvious reasons, trend to be both bland, flattering and extremely general in their descriptions of people they've never met. So if the program tells you you're 'asseritve, impulsive, creative, ambitious...' don't kid yourself that others don't think you're a homicidal maniac from whom society should be protected!

Still it's a good program if you like this sort of thing and, since inputting the answers to the questions is so easy, a good introduction to the fun of home computers.

Simon Dally