National Knowledge Exam® (NKE) questions are written by professors who teach Human Resources at colleges and universities across Canada.  They use the description of the CHRP, the CCHRA Body of Knowledge of HR professionals and the description of the Required Professional Capabilities (RPCs®) as the framework under which they write their items.  New items are edited by a professional editor who works extensively in the HR field.  They are reviewed by the CCHRA's Exam Board who give the final approval for addition to our exam item database.  The Exam Board also regularly reviews items in the database to ensure that they remain current.

Items are selected for exams based on the proportion specified in the CHRP Body of Knowledge of HR professionals. For example, there are 16 items on Employee and Labour Relations on the NKE. The Exam Board also reviews and approves the draft exam.

Exam preparation course providers have access to descriptions of the CHRP, the HR Body of Knowledge and of all of the RPCs®, but they are not provided access to the actual questions that will appear on any exam.

After an exam is administered, the Exam Board reviews the overall exam statistics (for example, the average score and how many exam writers passed or failed), as well as the item functioning of each and every item (i.e. how many exam writers got each item correct, was there a response option other than the correct one that was selected quite often, etc). If there are items that do not function well, the Exam Board will make a decision to adjust scores to provide exam writers a credit for these items.