I took FOCCUS test - info to know

Hey guys,

I just took the FOCCUS test last week so if anybody wants to know anything about it just ask me since its fresh in my head!

Basically though they make you answer a bunch of questions, here are some words of advice:

1. warn your FH about double negatives ahead of time they said they guys always mess that up.

2. try to talk about some of these issues beforehand so you don't look like 'why'd you put that down' to your FH or vice versa

3. realize if your married before, cohabitating or interfaith you have to answer even more questions up to 190 total (ick)

4. the answers are agree, disagree or undecided, basically don't ever put undecided unless its really hard to decide, b/c that is always the wrong answer

5. for all the questions, there are the 'desired answers' aka correct ones, so even if u and FH have the same answer, its still wrong.

6. they rate you according to how many you got wrong where each question drops you down, so one wrong gives you a 90%, two wrong 80%, etc and if you do really bad... well lets say that's bad.

7. if you get something wrong you sort of have to explain yourself so keep that in mind when answering, cause a lot of them its obvious which is the 'desired' answer or not

Any other questions, feel free to ask!

Re: I took FOCCUS test - info to know

i dont think there are any 'wrong' answers.

It is just questioing your beliefs and compatability.....

let's face it if you are getting married, i would assume you are compatable!!!

just be honest.. if your answers dont match .... it is ok.. you can still get married!!!!

it will bring up things that you may want to discuss... especially if you are not living together..

i found that for us the test was soooooooo easy.. for 2 reasons...

1. we have been together 8 years
2. we live together

we got scolded for living ogether, then after the deacon saw our results.. he changed his tune and said... what took you so long to get married!!!

so my advice is relax, have fun and be honest!!!!

Re: I took FOCCUS test - info to know

Well first of all its still a test and there are undesired answers (I call this incorrect or wrong). You and your FH can answer each question in agreement with each other, but if you've both picked the 'undesired' instead of the 'desired' answer, it's still considered an 'undesired' or 'incorrect' answer for both of you. And if everybody who wants to get married or gets married is so compatible why is the divorce rate so high? If you do really horrific on this you might want to take a second to think about why. Esp. with the red flag questions like if one of you has a drug or alcohol problem, you are being pressured into marriage, your spouse abuses you, you have totally different opinions on finance or kids, etc. I don't mean to scare anybody with the implication that if you do poorly it definitely indicates a real problem, but the couple administering the test told us exactly that.

Also, the scoring system I mentioned is by topic, so if you get 2 undesired answers in the area of finance, your score on finance is 80%. If your answers don't match on a few no problem, however if you disagree on a lot (10-12 in a few or more topics) then there are probably some issues that need to be worked out between you two. For example, my brother and his wife did really bad on this, were requested to take extra marital counseling, got married anyways, and are still having problems.

I have been with my FH for 6 years now and we live together and we did really well but I thought some of it was kind of personal, really odd questions or just totally confusing what the question was asking. I think though that being together for a long time and living together may help since you've have more time together to talk about stuff, but if you have a relationship where you don't talk about the 'hard stuff' then this test will bring that to light.

I agree you should be honest, but there is nothing wrong with being prepared. My view was to make sure you talk about these things beforehand. IMO I felt like a FOCCUS test in front of a priest or a parish couple isn't the best place to discover your relationship issues. It can always be a good surprise like yea! we're compatible but it could also be a bad surprise too.

In reference to my #7, for instance if you are the type who doesn't agree wholeheartedly with every church belief you might want to consider that if you disagree with one of the religious questions, then you better have some sort of explanation when they go over it, cause they *will* ask you why you put that.

I didn't give the info to scare anybody, I'm just the type of person who likes more information to know what I'm getting into beforehand. So if you are like me I hope I helped somewhat.

(Edited for clarification)

Re: I took FOCCUS test - info to know

My fiance and I met with the deacon to go over the results on Thursday. We were in and out within 15 minutes. He showed us the percentage graph on how we scored. No to toot our own horn though but we were in the high 90's and 2 or 3 100's. The deacon just went over the answers that are normally problem areas for people. It turns out many people have different answers for one or two certain sections. We talked about why i put one answer and my fh put another. A few of them i realized i misread after the deacon explained the question to me. =o( But honestly so many girls worry about this test, including myself, it really is not a big deal. They have no right to tell you they will not marry you because you didn't agree on answers.

Re: I took FOCCUS test - info to know

I just took the foccus test- there are no Wrong answers. Just areas that you may need to discuss. A few RED flag questions. They let us take the test home and we sat and discussed our answers- we will meet with the deacon in the next week to discuss.