NEW YORK: How often do you balance your cheque book? What was your best subject in high school? If you were a dog, what breed would you be? For seekers of self-knowledge, there's a plethora of online personality tests that will help gauge everything from weighty matters like what type of mate or career would be best for you, to more frivolous concerns such as whether your personality is more like that of a Golden Retriever or a Chihuahua.

This form of self-analysis is hardly new. For decades, people have taken tests such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, an assessment developed in the 1940s based on Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung's theories about psychological type preferences.

Less scientific quizzes have long been the hallmarks of women's magazines like Cosmopolitan, whose current issue features the multiple-choice quiz "How Seductive Are You?"

Some of the most popular online tests are found on dating sites like eHarmony. com or Match.com . The latter offers a personality assessment as well as a "physical attraction test" that involves the physical traits.

Many of the basic tests are free, although you're likely to get a pitch to buy more detailed reports or to subscribe to a matchmaking service once you fill out a questionnaire.

Tickle.com (http://www.tickle.com), formerly known as Emode.com, is one site that offers about 200 tests whose basic results are available at no charge. Among them is the popular "What Breed of Dog Are You?" quiz. Chihuahuas, for example, are considered energetic, devoted, saucy and intense.

The idea behind Tickle is to tap into people's favourite subject: "themselves," said company founder and Chief Executive James Currier. Tickle. com's free tests are designed mostly for entertainment.

But the company charges $14.95 for a premium service featuring more in-depth, "PhD certified" tests on personality, careers and relationships that the company says are drawn from the latest psychological research.

Not surprisingly, many experts are sceptical about whether there is any true insight to be gleaned from quizzes available on the Internet. While answering the questions can be fun, users probably shouldn't rely too much on the scores because in most cases it's not clear how the quizzes are compiled or who is tabulating the results, said Carl Weinberg, a psychoanalyst in New York. -Reuters