Frequently Asked Questions About Licensing Exams

Frequently Asked Questions About Licensing Exams

Open/closed book exams

CLEAR Exam Review (Winter 1993)
Eric Werner, M.A.

Question: Our board's laws and rules contain many critical technical and procedural provisions that directly affect the way licensees are supposed to practice. We test (multiple-choice) on this material, and this state test supplements a national subject-matter knowledge test. Both the national and the board's test are closed book, but we are not sure whether ours really should be. How do we decide? If we change to an open book test, are we lowering our standards, and should we raise the passing score or make the test more difficult to compensate for this?

Answer: You should decide on open- vs. closed-book test after thinking about how the change to open book might affect the content validity of your test--in particular, its relatedness to licensee practice. Try answering these questions:

How frequently do competent licensees consult the Board's laws and rules before proceeding with a task or responsibility addressed therein?
Is the knowledge tested of the sort that licensees frequently need to have "at their fingertips" to make important decisions or to take actions?
Could a person who is not prepared for licensure easily pass your test if it were open book (under the current time limit)? Or must a candidate possess substantial relevant knowledge to understand the laws and rules and to apply them to test questions in an effective way?
If a candidate had thoroughly memorized your laws and rules when he or she was licensed, how long in the normal course of competent, active practice would it be before this memory faded so significantly that regular reference to written laws and rules were necessary and desirable?

If answers to these questions suggest that an open-book format is appropriate, the format change would not represent a lowering of standards. Passing rates may or may not change with an open-book format. Making your test harder to pass after changing to open-book format would not be a reasonable action.