The test forms are used for one year, we have NCSN item writers convene every year to write new questions, those questions are then reviewed by a different group of NCSNs to review the questions to make sure they are appropriate.  Those newly written questions go into a pool and are used 25 per year on the exam to get statistics to see how they perform.  Once a year we also review questions that did not perform as expected to see if they should be archived, rewritten, or just discarded.  Also, towards the end of the year, the testing company puts together 3 new forms for the following year and a group of NCSNs reviews those forms prior to them being published. So you can see there are a lot of eyes looking at the questions. 

If you are taking the exam more than one time in a given year, a different form will be assigned to you than the one you had previously. It may seem familiar to you though, because the pretest questions will be the same.  The pretest questions are not marked differently or anything, they just are not scored.

Warm regards,

Pat

Pat Krin, MSN, MS, RN, FNP-BC-Retired, NCSN-E, FNASN

Executive Director

NBCSN

nbcsnexec@nbcsn.org

www.nbcsn.org