The Human Resource Certification Institute's (HRCI) exams are only as good as the individual items from which they are comprised. These items must be valid, reliable and able to discriminate between those who have mastered human resource knowledge requirements and those who do not possess such mastery. ( Item Developer’s Handbook , p. 1-2).

During training, emphasis is placed the importance of writing and formatting items to be at the appropriate cognitive level for the appropriate exam.

HRCI classifies all items according to the following levels:

• Knowledge/Comprehension: Recalling factual material, translation or interpretation of a concept.
• Application/Problem Solving: Applying familiar principles or generalization to solve real-life problems.
• Synthesis/Evaluation: Combining distantly related elements into a whole involving critical judgments in terms of accuracy or consistency of logic.

Item writers are challenged to develop items that:

• Are relevant and appropriate for an HR generalist practitioner to know.
• For the PHR and SPHR exams, differentiate between the levels in terms of format and cognitive level necessary to correctly answer the items.
• Are of varying difficulty levels.
• Are of an appropriate reading level.
• Have distractors or foils (incorrect choices) that are plausible yet wrong.

Item reviewers are challenged to determine if the items they receive to review:

• Are appropriate for the HR generalist to know.
• Are correctly and concisely stated and premised correctly.
• Are grammatically correct.
• Pose a correct answer that is clearly the best answer.
• Pose distractors that are plausible but not the best answer.
• Are current.
• Are culturally, ethnically and geographically fair.
• Are clearly written at the appropriate level.
• Are coded to the HRCI test specifications.

In item review, items can be minimally edited or substantially rewritten. Some items that cannot be improved upon will be rejected.

After each test administration, performance data on each item and the exam form as a whole are carefully evaluated. There are a number of statistical measures routinely calculated for each item and reviewed. Items that do not perform to established standards are either discarded or placed back in item review for further revision. This continuous item review ensures that exams are both valid and reliable.

Multiple-choice items consist of three parts, the premise (or stem), the correct answer and distractors. The premise states the problem or the question to be answered. The correct answer is one of the four options that represent the correct response or the best correct response. In this case, "best" means that a panel of experts would agree to this judgment. Distractors are the incorrect responses. A question is considered to be good if the distractors are plausible yet wrong or not the best possible option.

There are other types of premise statement categories. Among the most common are purpose ("What was the primary reason for passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act [1986]?"), definition ("The fact that a test actually measures what it is supposed to measure is called..."), ordering ("What is the first step in validating a test?"), cause and effect ("The comparable worth issue is caused by which compensation practice?"), recognition of error ("Which interview question would bring a disability discrimination charge?"), association ("One possible by-product of extensive job simplification is...") and similarity ("The EEOC and the OFCCP both investigate...").

Item writers are taught to write items that measure meaningful and relevant knowledge requirements that reflect the knowledge or skills actually needed in the performance of an HR generalist's job duties. Items should require knowledge that a good candidate will possess and a poor candidate is not likely to have.