At a time when polarization is deeply entrenched in U.S. politics, relating to one another as citizens first has become increasingly important. How can people discuss the policy decisions that impact their communities without getting pulled into the partisan hostility?

A team of scholars at Stanford’s Hoover Institution has developed one way to help Americans across the political spectrum relate to each other: the Civic Profile, a free online tool that helps people understand their civic identity.

Citizenship means many things to many people, said Chester “Checker” Finn, the Volker Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution who co-led the group that developed the tool at Hoover’s Center for Revitalizing American Institutions (RAI).

“A good citizen isn’t just somebody who votes,” explained Finn. “It’s also somebody who shovels their neighbor’s walk when it snows, goes to the school board meeting, or takes an interest in the safety of their community.”

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The Civic Profile begins with an interactive quiz that measures civic values, knowledge, and engagement. All responses are anonymous.

Participants then see where they fall on a continuum of nine values related to their beliefs about how a democracy functions best: change, civic openness, civic solidarity, community, constructive patriotism, equality, individualism, national belonging, and tradition. They also learn their civic engagement style across three types: institutional actor, community builder, or change advocate.

Participants may find they don’t fall neatly into a single value or engagement style, and may land evenly across several types.

The scholars liken the Civic Profile to a “civics Meyers-Briggs,” after the popular questionnaire that sorts people into different personality types.

“But the tool isn’t just a report on yourself,” said Finn. The Civic Profile offers a shared framework for discussing what matters to a person and why. “It’s a way of getting people who have different values to politely discuss why they’re different – and that fosters its own civic value, which is respectful discourse among people who disagree,” Finn added.

Taking the Civic Profile as a cohort

The Civic Profile can also be taken as a cohort: as a family, with friends, at work, or in a class to compare their results as a group. Since its launch in March 2026, over 160 cohorts have been created, representing a wide range of settings and interests. Finn suggested groups from Scout troops to book clubs can take the Civic Profile together.

“And then talk about it!” he said.

Stanford senior Eva Lacy, who was on the team that helped develop the Civic Profile, was drawn to the project by the opportunity to help people discuss civics and citizenship with curiosity rather than partisan animosity.

“There’s so much division right now, and the Civic Profile felt like something that actively pushes against that,” said Lacy, an economics major.

Lacy said she was also eager to build on the topics she explored in Citizenship in the 21st Century, the winter-quarter offering in Civic, Liberal, and Global Education (COLLEGE), Stanford’s first-year undergraduate requirement program.

Over the past three years, Lacy has helped the Working Group on Civics and American Citizenship conduct background research for the Civic Profile and think through ways to steer a disagreement away from confrontation and toward conversation.

“So much of it comes down to who we are, what we value, and where we come from,” Lacy said.

Another aspect of the tool is that users can see how they compare with a nationally representative sample of other Americans based on data gathered in collaboration with the polling firm, YouGov.

“The Civic Profile is designed to help users understand how they fit into America’s diverse civic culture,” explained Salvatore Ingrassia, research program manager for Civics and Citizenship. “It’s proven to be a great way for the average person to get a feel for the nature of civic unity and division in American life,” Ingrassia added.

Taking the Civic Profile at Stanford

Nearly 100 incoming Stanford students who participated in the Summer Frosh and Transfers Civil Dialogues Program, an opportunity to practice skills for talking across differences before classes start, took the quiz as a cohort.

Collin Anthony Chen, who leads the program at the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society, used the three main values that the cohort’s Civic Profile surfaced as a lens for discussing political issues. Instead of only discussing whether a person agreed or disagreed with an issue, they reflected on how their values and those of others inform their perspectives on controversial topics. Some of the discussion topics included whether national monuments should be removed or renamed and what obligations the U.S. government has to support job displacement resulting from AI.

“Students are primed to see that there is more than one way to frame and understand an issue,” said Chen. “Students with different values can come to the same conclusions, and vice versa: People with the same values can arrive at very different conclusions.”

Tom Schnaubelt, the executive director of RAI, is also an instructor for Citizenship in the 21st Century. When the Civic Profile was in the testing phase, he asked his class if they would be interested in trying it out.

Aydin Alsan, a student in Schnaubelt’s seminar, said the Civic Profile broadened his understanding of what it means to be an engaged citizen. “You realize civic engagement is multifaceted. You can do it in many different ways,” said Alsan, who is majoring in math and computer science.

He shared the tool with dormmates and fellow Frosh Service Liasons at the Haas Center for Public Service.

He was especially struck by how the Civic Profile doesn’t put people in boxes based on their beliefs. “When we have conversations that revolve around civics or politics in general, we can see each other as very 2D characters – like that person is just a Republican, a Democrat, or a Libertarian loyal to a party platform. But the Civic Profile brings us past that single-faceted nature we tend to ascribe to one another,” Alsan said.