Dream Test: Recall, Lucid Dreams and Nightmares
How the Scales are Structured
Who Usually Takes This Test?
See How You Compare
Below is a preview of how scores are typically distributed across each scale.
Example Questions From the Test
- Never
- Rarely
- Sometimes
- Often
- Very often
- Never
- Rarely
- Sometimes
- Often
- Very often
- Never
- Rarely
- Sometimes
- Often
- Very often
Dream Test: Recall, Lucid Dreams and Nightmares - Description and methodology of the test
Some people wake up with a full story in their heads every morning, while others swear they never dream at all. This dream test shows where you sit between those two poles and what your nights are actually made of. If you often wake up from vivid dreams that colour the whole morning, or wonder why your sleep feels blank, this is a good place to start.
What the test measures
The result starts with one headline number, your dream life intensity, and then splits it into three parts. Dream recall shows how often you wake up with a dream still in mind and how much of it you can retell. Vividness covers colour, sound and the feelings a dream leaves behind, including the odd moment when you are not sure whether something really happened. Lucidity shows how often you notice you are asleep while the dream is still running, and whether you can steer it. A fourth score stands apart from the headline number. It looks at nightmares: how often frightening dreams come, whether they jolt you awake and how much of the fear follows you into the day or keeps you from going to bed. Kept separate, it shows whether a busy dream life is also a heavy one.
How the test works and how to read the result
There are 25 short statements about real nights and mornings, and the whole questionnaire takes about 5 minutes. For each one you choose how often it happens, from Never to Very often, thinking of the last few months rather than one unusual night. Three statements describe the opposite experience, such as waking up with no memory of dreaming, and are scored in reverse. Many people arrive here looking for a lucid dreaming test, and the lucidity part answers that question directly. Your result includes:
- your overall intensity from 0 to 100 with a plain label;
- separate scores for recall, vividness and lucidity;
- the part of your nights that stands out most and the one that stays quiet;
- your nightmare score, read on its own scale;
- a comparison with other people who answered the same statements.
Read the profile as a portrait of your nights, not a fixed trait. Dream life shifts with stress, sleep schedules, alcohol and big life changes, so taking the questionnaire again a few months later often shows a different picture.
- Schredl, M., Berres, S., Klingauf, A., Schellhaas, S., & Göritz, A. S. (2014). The Mannheim Dream questionnaire (MADRE): Retest reliability, age and gender effects. International Journal of Dream Research, 7(2), 141-147.
- Levin, R., & Nielsen, T. A. (2007). Disturbed dreaming, posttraumatic stress disorder, and affect distress: A review and neurocognitive model. Psychological Bulletin, 133(3), 482-528.
- Hartmann, E. (1984). The Nightmare: The Psychology and Biology of Terrifying Dreams. New York: Basic Books.
- LaBerge, S. (1985). Lucid Dreaming. Los Angeles: J. P. Tarcher.
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