Behind the New Integrated EPPP: How the Exam Items Are Developed

Inside the methodical, collaborative process of writing, reviewing, and validating exam items

What is the New Exam?

The new integrated Examination for Professional Practice in Psychology® (EPPP) is a 215-item exam, including 40 non-scored pretest items, that covers six knowledge and skill domains necessary for the competent practice of psychology. The domains, along with their exam weights and item numbers, are as follows: Scientific Orientation to Practice (15%), Assessment (20%), Intervention (20%), Consultation and Supervision (10%), Interpersonal Relationships (15%), and Ethical and Professional Practice (20%). The new EPPP will become operational in Fall 2027, and full details on the exam’s content specification are available in the Future EPPP Content Areas section of the ASPPB website.

With this revision of the EPPP, licensing boards will have an examination that offers a standardized, reliable, valid, and legally defensible method of assessing both the knowledge and applied skills necessary for the independent practice of psychology.

Why the Change?

The EPPP was initially developed in the 1960s to assess the foundational knowledge necessary for the independent practice of psychology. Since 1965, jurisdictions in the United States and Canada have adopted it to license psychology professionals. Over the following decades, the EPPP was modified in response to changes in the profession of psychology and feedback from licensed psychologists through multiple Job Task Analyses (JTAs).

In the early 2000s, in response to developments in evaluating competence in both the profession of psychology and other health care professions, the Association of State and Provincial Psychology Boards ® (ASPPB) began examining ways to expand the EPPP to assess competence. These efforts involved two JTAs and the work of multiple ASPPB task forces, leading to the development of a competence assessment framework that could be implemented via a standardized examination. Accordingly, the scope of the EPPP was expanded in 2020 to include the assessment of both knowledge and skills in a two-part examination (the EPPP (Part 1-Knowledge) and the EPPP (Part 2-Skills)).

After two years of extensive consultation and feedback from numerous stakeholders regarding the implementation of this two-part competency-based exam, in 2024 the ASPPB Board of Directors decided the EPPP would further shift to become an integrated competency assessment that assesses both knowledge and skills in a single examination. A JTA was completed in 2025 to develop the blueprint for this new integrated licensing examination. Based on input from almost 3,000 licensed/registered psychologists in the United States and Canada, the resulting blueprint now serves as the basis for an integrated competency examination, the next step in the ongoing development of the EPPP.

Exam Development Process: How is the Exam Built and Who is Involved?

EPPP exam forms are developed to match the domain weight requirements of the exam blueprint. Each exam form has two components: operational items and pretest items. Operational items are items verified as psychometrically sound, based on both classical and item response theory (IRT) statistics, in previous exam forms. Only these items contribute to a candidate’s score on the exam. Pretest items are newly developed items that are being evaluated for possible use as operational items on future exam forms. They do not contribute to a candidate’s score; however, if found to be psychometrically sound, they can subsequently be used as operational items.

Pretest items are written to blueprint requirements by dozens of psychologists with expertise in the subject area of the exam domains that are foundational to the competent practice of psychology. Writers are trained in item writing, including but not limited to implicit bias training, and follow style and item writing guidelines set by ASPPB. The writing of items occurs once a year at an Item Writing Workshop, and no items are written by artificial intelligence programs. At the workshop, the item writers and the 13-member Item Development Committee (IDC) work in teams of subject matter experts (SMEs) with similar expertise, and all draft exam items are reviewed and refined by the teams to ensure relevance to entry-level practice, accuracy of content, and lack of bias in content and wording.

Pearson VUE, the exam vendor, develops draft forms of the new EPPP that meet the blueprint requirements. Operational items selected for these draft exam forms are reviewed by the 11-member Examination Committee (ExC). This process takes place in three stages:

First Stage

In the first stage, the domain lead (an SME in that domain) reviews the items to ensure continued relevance to entry-level practice, accuracy of content, lack of bias in content and wording, psychometric adequacy, currency of the item reference, and to ensure that the items represent a breadth of areas assessed in that domain (i.e., limiting items with similar content under assessment).

Second Stage

In the second stage, all ExC members review questions outside their domain. They review all questions according to the areas assessed in the first stage and ensure items do not inadvertently overlap with items elsewhere in the exam.

Third Stage

In the third stage, the domain lead then reviews any comments from the other ExC members and then determines which operational items should be discussed by the full committee at the ExC meeting.

As with the operational items, pretest items generated by the IDC are reviewed by the ExC in a three-stage process for relevance to entry-level practice, accuracy of content, lack of bias in content and wording, to ensure that the items represent a breadth of areas assessed in that domain, and to ensure that items do not inadvertently overlap with items elsewhere in the exam (either operational or pretest). Additionally, the members of the Item Review Committee, composed of nine psychologists with expertise in cultural competence/humility and/or expertise in the experiences of a specific historically marginalized group, are asked to review the pretest items and provide the ExC with feedback on any potential bias in item content and/or wording that they identify. Based on these reviews, the items generated by the IDC might be refined/modified by the ExC prior to their inclusion on an exam form as unscored pretest items, or they might be removed from the pretest item bank.

After these stages are complete, the ExC meets for two to three days to review, discuss, and reach consensus on the inclusion or exclusion of individual items that the domain leads identified for discussion. Importantly, the final selection of operational items to be included on an exam form is informed by the operational items’ IRT statistics, thus ensuring that the overall difficulty of the EPPP is consistent across exam forms.

For more articles on the EPPP, visit: https://asppb.net/news-category/eppp-news/ or visit our YouTube channel.