Workplace Bullying Test: See How Often Negative Acts Are Happening to You at Work
This workplace bullying test asks how often 20 specific things have happened to you at work over the last six months, from a meeting held without you to being shouted at in front of colleagues. Get an instant score, a breakdown by type, and an optional PDF.
Reviewed by Michael Callans, MSW 
Workplace Bullying Test is a free, confidential 20-question self-assessment, original educational screener informed by workplace bullying research. It takes about 6 minutes, runs entirely in your browser, and gives you a plain-language score across 4 interpretation bands plus an optional in-depth report. It is an educational screening, not a diagnosis.
A pattern of acts over time, not a label for your boss
Researchers define workplace bullying as repeated negative acts over a period of time, directed at someone who finds it hard to defend themselves. That definition is about frequency and pattern, not about whether a manager is a bad person. This screener measures exactly that: what has been happening to you, how often, and in what form. The page ends with plain guidance on documenting, raising it, and looking after yourself.
Specific acts, not vague feelings
Twenty original statements, each a concrete scene rather than a category label: a meeting moved without anyone telling you, an old mistake raised in front of a new manager, a raised voice in front of colleagues, a criticism copied to other people. Each is rated by how often it has happened over the last six months, so the score reflects a pattern rather than a single bad week.
Three forms the research distinguishes
Work-related bullying (your tasks, deadlines, and information), person-related bullying (humiliation, exclusion, gossip), and intimidation (shouting, threats, pressure). Knowing which form dominates changes what you document and who you take it to.
Guidance built into the result
Every band comes with practical next steps: how to tell bullying from tough management, how to document, what HR and external routes generally involve, and how to protect your health while you decide. The highest band points you to support, not to a report.
| Feature | Typical free quiz | Psychology.com |
|---|---|---|
| Based on the research definition of bullying | Rarely | Yes, repeated acts over time |
| Asks about specific acts over six months | Often vague | Yes, 22 concrete behaviors |
| Separates work-related, personal, and intimidation | No | Yes, three-way breakdown |
| Never labels your manager or colleagues | Often labels them | Never; it measures what happens to you |
| Clinician-reviewed interpretation | Rarely | Yes, clinician reviewed |
| Optional in-depth personalized report | No | Yes, written to your exact scores |
| Answers stay on your device | Often collected | Scored in your browser; only summary scores if you request a PDF or report |
How scoring works
Answers are scored 0–80 in total. Your result falls into one of 4 bands:
| Score | Band | What it suggests |
|---|---|---|
| 0–19 | Few negative acts reported | Your answers show few of the negative acts this screener measures. Something brought you here, though, and that is worth listening to. |
| 20–39 | Some negative acts, worth watching | Your answers show negative acts happening with some regularity. This may be a difficult environment, a conflict, or the early shape of bullying, and it is worth taking seriously now. |
| 40–59 | Frequent negative acts | Your answers show negative acts happening frequently, across more than one form. This is the pattern research describes as workplace bullying, and it is not something you have to absorb. |
| 60–80 | Pervasive negative acts | Your answers show negative acts happening very often, across work, personal, and intimidating forms. Please hold on to this: none of it is deserved, and support, not endurance, is what helps now. |
How the workplace bullying score is calculated
The test lists 20 negative acts and asks how often each has happened to you at work over the last six months, from never (0) to very often (4). The total runs from 0 to 80, and higher means more frequent exposure to more kinds of negative behavior. The four result bands are quarters of that range. They are educational guides for reflection, not legal or clinical thresholds, and no score on this page establishes that bullying has occurred in any formal sense; that is a judgment for a workplace process, a union, or a lawyer, based on evidence and context.
The breakdown splits the same answers into three forms. Work-related bullying covers seven scenes aimed at your ability to do your job: a meeting held without you, a deadline nobody in your role could have met, work that turned up on someone else's list, instructions that contradicted each other, your work presented as someone else's, entitlements made awkward to ask for, and your hours or messages checked in a way other people's are not. Person-related bullying covers seven scenes aimed at you as a person: an old mistake raised in front of a new manager, hearing about a team lunch afterwards, a remark about your appearance or background passed off as a compliment, a confidence repeated back to you, your point praised in someone else's mouth, a running joke that continued after you asked it to stop, and a greeting walked past. Intimidation covers six: a joke about what happens to people who complain, a raised voice in front of others, someone standing close enough that you had to step back, a criticism copied to other people, your job or shifts mentioned alongside something you objected to, and something thrown or slammed during a disagreement. This grouping is our own, built for reflection; it is not a validated factor structure.
The standard research measure of this construct is the Negative Acts Questionnaire-Revised (NAQ-R), developed by Ståle Einarsen and colleagues at the University of Bergen, which also uses a six-month window and distinguishes work-related and person-related bullying and intimidation. The NAQ-R is a licensed research instrument made available by the Bergen Bullying Research Group on its own terms, for non-commercial research. It is named here so you can find the research. This page does not reproduce its items, our 20 statements were written and then checked against its published list specifically to avoid overlapping with it, and this screener has not been validated against it.
Bullying, tough management, and one bad day
Not every unpleasant experience at work is bullying, and the difference matters because it shapes what you do next. A demanding manager who sets high standards, gives blunt feedback, and holds you to deadlines is not bullying you, even if it feels harsh, as long as the demands are legitimate, applied to others too, and about the work. A single heated argument, a public correction that stung, or a stressful month with an unreasonable workload is a bad experience, not a pattern. Bullying, in the research definition, has three features: the negative acts are repeated, they continue over time, and you cannot easily defend yourself because of a power difference, formal or informal.
The questions to ask are: is this happening again and again, has it gone on for months, is it aimed at me in particular, and do I have a realistic way to stop it. If the answers are yes, yes, yes, and no, you are describing bullying regardless of whether the person doing it would recognize the word. If the answers are mixed, you may be dealing with a toxic culture, a badly managed team, or a conflict between equals, which are real problems with different remedies. The score cannot make this call for you, but a high score on person-related bullying or intimidation, with the acts repeating over six months, is the pattern the research is describing. If you independently want to reflect on your own conflict habits, Am I the Problem? Relationship Self-Check offers a separate exercise. Taking it is not a condition of being believed or receiving support, and responsibility for another person's bullying remains with that person.
What bullying does to health
The evidence here is unambiguous. Nielsen and Einarsen's 2012 meta-analysis found that exposure to workplace bullying is associated with mental health problems, physical symptoms, lower job satisfaction, and intention to leave. Verkuil, Atasayi, and Molendijk's 2015 meta-analysis, pooling studies of more than 100,000 workers, found that bullying was associated with symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress, and that the longitudinal studies pointed to bullying preceding the symptoms, not only the other way round. A large Finnish cohort study by Kivimäki and colleagues found that employees who reported prolonged bullying had higher rates of new depression and of cardiovascular disease over the following years.
This is why the top band on this page points you to support rather than to a report. If you have been living with frequent negative acts for months, it is normal to be sleeping badly, dreading Mondays, replaying conversations, doubting your competence, and withdrawing from people. Those are predictable responses to a hostile environment, not evidence that you are weak or that the treatment is deserved. Our Stress Level Test, the Burnout Test, and the Anxiety Test can show you how much strain you are carrying, and our Self-Esteem Test can show whether the treatment has started to change how you see yourself. If your mood has been low for more than a couple of weeks, please talk to a doctor or therapist; the health effects of bullying are real and treatable, and you do not have to wait until the work situation is resolved.
Documenting, raising it, and leaving
Whatever you decide to do, start a record now. Keep a dated log, stored outside work systems, of each incident: what happened, who was there, what was said, and any effect on your work or health. Save emails and messages. Note when work was reassigned or information withheld. A log does three things: it shows you whether there is a pattern, it makes a complaint concrete instead of a matter of feelings, and it protects you if the account is later disputed. Keep the tone of the log factual. Ask trusted colleagues whether they have noticed the same behavior, but do not pressure anyone to take sides.
Routes for raising it vary by employer and by country, so this page gives only the general shape. Most organizations have a grievance or dignity-at-work policy, usually through HR, and many have an employee assistance program that offers confidential counseling. Unions and staff associations can advise and accompany you. In many places, a labor inspectorate, ombudsman, or employment tribunal provides an external route, and bullying that is tied to a protected characteristic such as sex, race, disability, age, or religion may fall under harassment or discrimination law with stronger protections. An employment lawyer or a free legal advice service can tell you what applies where you are. Be realistic about HR: its job is to manage risk to the organization, which sometimes aligns with protecting you and sometimes does not, so go in with your log and a clear request. If anyone has threatened or used physical violence, that is a matter for security and, where appropriate, the police, not only for HR.
Leaving is not losing. Many people who are bullied at work eventually move, and research on outcomes suggests that getting out of the environment is one of the most reliable ways to recover. If you are weighing it, our Should I Quit My Job? Quiz asks the practical questions. If you stay, decide what you need to see change, by when, and what you will do if it does not. Either way, build support outside work, keep your record, and remember that a score on this page is a tool for your own clarity, not a verdict on anyone.
Methodology & sources
This is an original educational screener answered about your workplace, not a validated instrument and not a legal test, and it is labeled as such. Its 20 statements were written for this page as concrete scenes rather than category labels, and they are informed by the research definition of workplace bullying as repeated and persistent negative acts against someone who has difficulty defending themselves (Einarsen, Hoel and Notelaers, 2009), and by the categories the research literature uses: work-related bullying, person-related bullying, and physically intimidating behavior. The Negative Acts Questionnaire-Revised (NAQ-R), developed by Einarsen and colleagues at the Bergen Bullying Research Group, is the standard research measure of this construct and is a licensed instrument released for non-commercial research on the group's own terms. It is named here nominatively only. Our items were deliberately written to avoid it: there are 20 of them rather than 22, they do not follow its order of ideas or its factor assignments, and every one was checked line by line against the full published list of 22 NAQ-R items to confirm that none reproduces or paraphrases one. This page does not reproduce the NAQ-R, does not use its scoring, and does not claim its validation evidence.
The three-way breakdown is our own grouping built for reflection, with seven work-related items, seven person-related items, and six intimidation items; it is not a validated factor structure, and the four result bands are quarters of the 0 to 80 range rather than published cut-offs. The result describes what you report happening to you; it does not diagnose or characterize any manager or colleague, and it cannot establish whether bullying has occurred in a formal, legal, or disciplinary sense. The health evidence summarized on this page comes from the meta-analyses cited below and describes associations across large groups of workers, not predictions about any one person.
This page is for adults in paid or voluntary work. If you are worried about a child or teenager being bullied, a school counselor, teacher, or pediatrician is the right starting point, and this questionnaire is not designed for that situation.
References
- Einarsen S, Hoel H, Notelaers G. Measuring exposure to bullying and harassment at work: Validity, factor structure and psychometric properties of the Negative Acts Questionnaire-Revised. Work & Stress. 2009;23(1):24-44. doi.org/10.1080/02678370902815673
- Nielsen MB, Einarsen S. Outcomes of exposure to workplace bullying: A meta-analytic review. Work & Stress. 2012;26(4):309-332. doi.org/10.1080/02678373.2012.734709
- Verkuil B, Atasayi S, Molendijk ML. Workplace bullying and mental health: A meta-analysis on cross-sectional and longitudinal data. PLoS ONE. 2015;10(8):e0135225. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0135225
- Kivimäki M, Virtanen M, Vartia M, Elovainio M, Vahtera J, Keltikangas-Järvinen L. Workplace bullying and the risk of cardiovascular disease and depression. Occupational and Environmental Medicine. 2003;60(10):779-783. doi.org/10.1136/oem.60.10.779
- Bergen Bullying Research Group. NAQ: The Negative Acts Questionnaire. University of Bergen. uib.no/en/rg/bbrg/44045/naq
Cite this source
Psychology.com. (2026, October 5). Workplace Bullying Test. Psychology.com. https://psychology.com/tests/workplace-bullying
Workplace Bullying Test FAQ
What counts as workplace bullying?
In the research definition, bullying is repeated negative acts, continuing over a period of months, directed at someone who finds it hard to defend themselves because of a difference in power. It can be about your work (information withheld, impossible deadlines, credit taken), about you as a person (humiliation, exclusion, rumors), or intimidating (shouting, threats). A one-off conflict, blunt feedback, or a stressful period is not bullying, even when it hurts.
Does a high score mean my manager is a bully?
No. This test measures what you report happening to you and how often; it does not and cannot characterize the person doing it, their intentions, or their personality. People bully for many reasons, including their own pressure, poor training, and organisational culture, and the label matters far less than the pattern. Keep the focus on the acts, the frequency, and the effect on you; that is what a workplace process or an advisor will ask about.
What if it is more than one person, or the whole culture?
Answer about your experience as a whole, not about one individual. Bullying can come from a manager, from peers, from a group, or from an organization whose norms make hostile behavior routine. If your score is high and spread across many people, you are probably describing a toxic environment rather than one difficult relationship, and the practical answer is more often about leaving than about complaining. Our should I quit my job quiz can help you think that through.
Is the test really confidential?
Yes. It runs entirely in your browser. Your individual answers are scored in your browser and are never sent to us or linked to you. They stay in this tab so you can return to your result, and closing or clearing the tab clears them. If you ask us to email the PDF, we receive your summary scores with your email address, never your individual answers. No account is needed.
Is this test for children being bullied at school?
No. This page is for adults at work. School bullying is a different situation with different support routes, and the right first step for a child or teenager is a teacher, school counselor, or pediatrician. If you are a parent looking for help, your child's school should have an anti-bullying policy and a named person to contact.
Can being bullied at work affect my mental health?
Yes, and the evidence is strong. Meta-analyses link bullying with depression, anxiety, stress symptoms, sleep problems, and physical complaints, and longitudinal studies suggest the bullying tends to come first. These are normal responses to a hostile environment, not a weakness. If you have been feeling low or on edge for more than a couple of weeks, our anxiety test and burnout test can show you where you stand, and a doctor or therapist can help while the work situation is being sorted out.
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