Myers-Briggs for Tech Writers

By Lyndsey Amott

In January 2004, a question came up on Techwr-l -- the discussion list for technical writers -- about psychological profiling. This soon led to a discussion about the accuracy of these tests and the Myers-Briggs Personality Test was frequently mentioned. I decided to do an unscientific survey: if list members emailed me their Myers-Briggs type, I would compile the responses.

Here are the results of that survey. Readers should take into account that no survey is representative of a population unless there are 1,000 responses. Readers should also realize that this is a very tongue-and-cheek analysis presented more for fun than for serious inquiry.

Data

There are 5,000 subscribers to Techwr-l. I received 28 responses, four of whom were undecided. This is a response rate of, er, well, somebody else will have to do the math. You can draw several possible conclusions for this:

Only 28 technical writers have done the Myers-Briggs test
There are not really 5,000 subscribers to the list
There are 5,000 subscribers, but hardly anyone actually reads the posts
There are 4972 lurkers on this list, all of whom are terrified of a handful of hot-tempered, flame-throwing contributors

I allowed approximately 72 hours for list members to respond to the survey because many list members receive the digest version of the list, meaning that they don't receive the postings until the next day.

The majority of immediate responses to the survey came from N types; the majority of next-day responses came from S types; the majority of third-day responses came from N types. Some possible explanations for this are:

Sensing (S) types are very sensible people; therefore, they get the digest version and set aside half an hour a day to read it
Some iNtuitives (N) types are so fascinated with all the new ideas floating around them each day, they forget to read the list postings

Type Distributions

The table below indicates the distribution of types among 28 technical writers. Due to the difficulty of indicating the four undecided types, I have decided that they are actually eight different types. Thus, a person who said he was a cross between one type and another has been counted as both. Asterisks indicate the types that fall into this category.

ISTP - 0	ESTP - 0	INTP - 2	ENTP - 4
ISTJ - 7	ESTJ - 1	INTJ - 7*	ENTJ - 2
ISFP - 0	ESFP - 0	INFP - 2*	ENFP - 1
ISFJ - 1*	ESFJ - 0	INFJ - 4*	ENFJ - 1
MYOB - 1 (possibly, 4972)

11 males and 17 females responded to the survey. This is probably due to the fact that there are more female than male technical writers. The following table shows gender distribution among all types, as indicated with nM or nF. In my role as Survey Taker and Grand Pooh-Bah, I have determined that the four undecideds were just being difficult, and so I have placed them where I think they ought to be in this table.

ISTP - 0	ESTP - 0	INTP - 2 (1F, 1M)	ENTP - 4 (4F)
ISTJ - 7 (6F, 1M)	ESTJ - 1 (1M)	INTJ - 7 (2F, 5M)	ENTJ - 2 (1F, 1M)
ISFP - 0	ESFP - 0	INFP -0	ENFP - 1 (1F)
ISFJ - 0	ESFJ - 0	INFJ - 3 (1F, 2M)	ENFJ - 1 (1F)
MYOB - 1 (possibly, 4972)

Some Conclusions

1. Overall, the majority of respondents were Ns. Possible conclusions are:

Most technical writers are Ns
The sensible Ss don't have time to waste on surveys
Ns like responding to surveys

2. Four respondents indicated that they were either this type or that type, depending on the day. Possible conclusions may include:

14% of technical writers have multiple personality disorder
?

3. Of the four noted above, regardless of the things that change, the N/S part remains constant. So, while an E might sometimes feel like an I, or a J might be a P once in a while, an N never becomes an S and an S never becomes an N. Possible conclusions for this may be:

This is an important observation and ought to be studied further
This is a red herring -- over the next two days I will receive 4,972 emails from people who are either N or S depending on the day

This has been a lighthearted look at the personality types of technical writers.

This article was provided by Lyndsey Amott. Lyndsey is a technical documentation consultant, editor, and the author of several children's books. She maintains Docsymmetry, a website for technical writers and managers of technical writers.