Other helpful information
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Be recognized for your expertise
NCC offers a variety of credentialing options for healthcare professionals. While certification is limited to nurses, our subspecialty examinations which lead to a certificate of added qualification are open to multidisciplinary populations including physicians, primary care nurse practitioners, nurse midwives, physician assistants and many other health care professionals.
NCC recognizes the challenges that face health professionals in today's health care environment. Create a new opportunity for yourself by earning certification or your certificate of added qualification to publicly demonstrate your expertise to employers, patients and colleagues. Take the next step by joining the over 75,000 professionals who have earned their RNC/NP certification or certificate of added qualification.
Content validation studies
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Approximately every 3–5 years, content validation studies are conducted for each of NCC exams. These studies involve surveying practicing professionals in the ob/gyn, women's health, neonatal, and maternal newborn specialties regarding the components of their practice. Based on the results of these studies, changes to test outline and what questions are written for the NCC examinations are considered. This is to insure that the exam reflect the ongoing changes that occur in practice.
The content teams are instrumental in the development of the surveys used to formulate the content validation studies. This is based on an in depth review of standards of practice, protocols and professional literature and research studies. The Content Teams review the results of the content validation studies and makes appropriate changes in the content outline and competency statements based on the input from those certified in various specialty areas regarding the frequency and criticality of tasks and areas of responsibilities in their day to day practice.
Test development
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NCC test development philosophy
NCC believes tests should be fair, reflect essential special knowledge (entry level for nurse practitioners) and provide the test-taker the best opportunity to demonstrate what they know. NCC believes tests should have passing scores that clearly differentiate candidates with special knowledge from those who cannot demonstrate such knowledge.
The entire test development and evaluation process is designed to meet the goal of assessing knowledge of health care professionals NCC certifies. By insuring the test development processes and test evaluation procedures are psychometrically sound and legally defensible, this correspondingly insures that the NCC examinations are a true and accurate measure of knowledge, skills and abilities.
NCC provides examinations to evaluate the special knowledge (entry level of nurse practitioners) seeking public recognition of their obstetric, gynecologic, neonatal, women's health nursing expertise. NCC believes the examination process is an opportunity for qualified health care professionals to demonstrate what they know. It provides these professionals with a fair and unbiased means to indicate they have achieved the level of special knowledge deemed essential by the NCC Board. NCC also provides examinations in subspecialty areas for multidisciplinary groups such as the Electronic Fetal Monitoring and Neonatal Pediatric Transport examinations. The same rigorous exam development process apply to these examinations as well.
Role of the content team
Content teams are appointed by the NCC President and are selected from among the certified populations for the specified area. Content teams oversee the test development by writing and reviewing test items, putting together and approving examinations for administration in accordance with the exam content outline, validate questions through review of current literature and make sure the item bank of test items reflect the current practice. Content teams meet yearly either face to face or virtually to make sure all exam forms reflect current practice based on both psychometric review of items and professional literature review. They are responsible for development of new exam forms. Exam forms are developed each year for both computer and paper and pencil testing.
Available documents
Exam scoring and statistics
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How are exams scored?
NCC examinations are criterion referenced. This means the passing score is based on predetermined criteria. The passing score is established by the NCC Board of Directors.NCC utilizes the item response theory of psychometrics for the analysis of its examinations. Item Response Theory (Rasch analysis) is the study of tests and item scores based on assumptions concerning the mathematical relationship between abilities and item responses.
Each test item has a difficulty and ability level. The higher the difficulty of an item, the greater the ability score one achieves. Pass/fail is determined based on the number of questions answered correctly. As a question is answered correctly, the ability score is increased and decreased when a question is answered incorrectly.
The difficulty of the examination determines the actual number of questions that must be answered correctly in order to achieve the passing ability level. Because more than one form of the examination is given, a process called equating is used. This procedure converts all results to a common scale. Someone who takes a slightly more difficult form of the examination will need to answer fewer questions correctly than someone who takes a slightly easier form of the examination.
Test result reports will identify pass/fail status and give feedback on the various content areas of the exam in the form of word descriptors: very weak, weak, average, strong, very strong.
Core examinations have 175 questions and subspecialty exam 125 questions.
View the last 3 years of exam statistics
For program directors & state boards of nursing
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Eligibility changes for NP exams
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About NCC nurse practitioner certification eligibility criteria changes
(Initially announced in 2004 and became effective 1/1/07).
This announcement contains important information about changes to the NCC certification program for the Women's Health Care Nurse Practitioner (WHNP) and the Neonatal Nurse Practitioner (NNP) examinations that NCC sponsors. If you are currently certified by NCC, these changes will have no effect on your certification. However, if you let your certification lapse, you will be subject to these changes. All new applicants whether previously NCC certified or not will be subject to these new eligibility criteria beginning January 1, 2007.
- Beginning on January 1, 2007 NCC will no longer recognize certificate education as an eligibility criterion to take the NCC WHNP examination. To qualify to take NCC WHNP examination, graduation from a Master's or post master's WHNP program that meets NCC current requirements will be required. NNP certificate education has not been recognized by NCC for exam eligibility purposes since January 1, 2000.
- Beginning January 1, 2007, NCC will only consider applicants from programs that hold CCNE and NLNAC accreditation during the time the accreditation process incorporated the Criteria for Evaluation of Nurse Practitioner Programs, National Task Force On Quality Nurse Education (National Task Force Guidelines) into their accreditation review.
- The accreditation organizations began such standard incorporation into their accreditation review January 1, 2005. Therefore, graduates from programs prior to January 1, 2005 will no longer be eligible to take or retake an NCC WHNP or NNP exam. The only way such individuals would qualify to take an NCC NP exam is to go back to a current NP program that meets NCC current requirements and earn a master's or post master's degree.
- Program reviews from defunct programs will no longer be undertaken. All individuals must be a graduate of WHNP or NNP program at the graduate level that meets NCC current requirements and are accredited by either CCNE or NLNAC.
Implication for current NCC RNCs
WHNPs or NNPs who let their certification lapse will be subject to these new eligibility criteria for re-examination. Therefore, any NCC certified nurse practitioner who graduated from a certificate program or who graduated from a WHNP or NNP graduate program prior to January 1, 2005 would not be eligible to retake the examination to regain certification status.
If you have any questions about this information, feel free to contact NCC's Executive Director, Betty Burns, CAE at bburns@nccnet.org
Content outlines and competency statements
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Below is a listing of Competency Statements and Content Outlines extracted from the Candidate Guides for your convenience. Download the complete Candidate Guide for these listings and other inportant information.
Download Complete Candidate Guides