Next Generation Testing National Council of State Boards of Nursing, Inc., (NCSBN) is experimenting with new question types for the NCLEX exam starting in the Spring of 2000.
Twenty new questions using innovative question types have been developed under the direction of the NCSBN Examination Committee. In their annual Book of Reports, NCSBN states, "These new item types may also invoke different levels of cognitive processing not being assessed with the current text-based multiple-choice questions." The 20 pilot questions involve formats such as essay (or free-text entry), zone (where portions of a graphic are selected), order match (which could be used to identify steps in a procedure), numeric entry (for calculations), and shading (for selecting an area of a graphic).
Students taking the NCLEX use a mouse and keyboard to answer these new question types. Although the format of these questions is different from the text-based, multiple-choice questions traditionally found on the NCLEX, the information tested by these questions is still minimum competency entry-level. It is important to remember that these 20 questions are experimental and do not count toward their NCLEX results.
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