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Exam scoring

The social work licensing exams measure minimum competence in social work practice.

Pass/Fail

In any pass/fail exam, there is a pass point, the number of questions a candidate must answer correctly to pass the exam. All jurisdictions that use the ASWB exams recognize the same pass point.

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Passing scores

Because of the adjustments needed to correctly score different versions, or forms, of the exam, ASWB cannot provide a fixed number of correct answers required to pass. Generally, pass points range from 90 to 107 correct answers of the 150 scored questions.

Because the social work exams are used in the United States and Canada, a pass result in one state or province is a pass result in all states or provinces that use that category of the social work licensing exams.

Reminder: There are 150 scored questions on the exams. Each exam has 20 pretest questions that are not scored and do not affect your results.

Equating

ASWB has multiple forms of each exam for exam security and to ensure that candidates who retake the exam do not get the same set of questions.

Because different candidates get different exam forms, ASWB reviews each form prior to publishing and uses statistical analysis of the individual questions to adjust the number of correct answers required to pass that exam form.

This process, equating, ensures the overall ability required to pass the exam remains the same from one exam form to another.

No one receives an advantage or disadvantage because of the exam form received.