Before becoming an architect, all candidates must take and pass the Architect Registration Examination® (ARE®)—a multi-part exam developed with the help of hundreds of volunteer architects, psychometricians, and other professionals.
Interested in learning more about how the exam is put together? NCARB is committed to being transparent about how the ARE is developed and administered, so candidates, licensing board members, and the public can trust the validity of ARE results. In this first blog of a four-part series, we’ll dive into the details regarding who’s involved in making the exam.
Who creates NCARB’s exam questions?
Hundreds of volunteer architects collaborate each year to draft exam questions. Each question (also called an item) goes through several rounds of review and testing before it moves forward to the actual exam.
Volunteers use their personal experience as architects to draft questions—many of the questions you see on the exam are based on real projects or scenarios our volunteers have encountered!
To minimize bias that could occur on the ARE, we ensure that each group of item-writing volunteers is diverse—including racial, ethnic, and gender diversity, but also geographic, firm size, experience, and background. All volunteers are trained in how to avoid bias in item construction, and the diversity of thought and perspective helps counteract any implicit or unconscious bias.
NCARB’s volunteers work with our consultants, who are psychometricians, to ensure that exam questions are valid and reliable, and that they meet best practices for testing.
What is a psychometrician?
A psychometrician is an expert in the development, design, and interpretation of assessments that measure any number of attributes. NCARB works with a company called Alpine Testing Solutions, which offers psychometric services across a wide range of assessments. In the case of licensure and certification, assessments are centered around knowledge, skills, and abilities related to a job, role, or specific domain.
The psychometricians who consult on the ARE have worked with NCARB for many years, which offers the advantage of familiarity with exam content, leading to greater tracking and improvements over time.
How are NCARB staff involved in the development of the ARE?
NCARB’s exam team provides support for volunteers writing exam questions. Our staff—including several architects—are trained on item-writing best practices and help bridge the gap between our psychometrician consultants and our volunteers. NCARB staff also work with our exam administration consultants (including PSI) to ensure the smooth delivery of the ARE and to protect exam security.
We’d like to thank our psychometric consulting firm, Alpine Testing Solutions, for contributing to this article.
