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Why is ExamReady practice built around quizzes?

Answering questions, then reading the explanation, helps you remember what you study and find gaps. What research shows and how NCLEX questions work.

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Reading notes again makes material feel familiar. Answering a question shows whether you can actually use it. Practice questions do two jobs at once: they help you learn, and they show you what you don't know yet.

Answering questions helps you remember

Psychologists call this the testing effect, or retrieval practice: recalling information makes it easier to recall again later.

  • A 2021 review in the Annual Review of Psychology concludes that "practicing retrieval shortly after learning can slow the forgetting process. This benefit can be seen across various material types, and it seems prevalent in all ages and learner abilities and on all types of test."
  • A 2024 systematic review of health professions education found 63 experiments, of which 43 "demonstrated significant benefits of distributed practice and/or retrieval practice over control and comparison groups." Its conclusion: "Distributed practice and retrieval practice are often effective at improving academic grades in health professions education."
  • Effort matters. A meta-analysis of the testing effect found "support for the role of effortful processing as a contributor to the testing effect, with initial recall tests yielding larger testing benefits than recognition tests." So when a question allows it, try to answer it in your head before you look at the options.

The explanation is part of the practice

Multiple-choice questions have a known weak spot: choosing a wrong option can make it stick. In a Washington University in St. Louis study, participants read passages and took a multiple-choice test. Compared with no feedback, both immediate and delayed feedback "increased the proportion of correct responses and reduced the proportion of intrusions" (wrong answers carried over from the test) on a later recall test. The authors' advice: "Educators should provide feedback when using multiple-choice tests."

For your own practice, read the explanation after each question, including the ones you got right by guessing. In a related study by the same group, feedback "doubled the retention of correct low-confidence responses, relative to providing no feedback." It also helps to ask yourself why each wrong option was wrong.

Spread practice out and mix topics

  • Spacing: the same health-professions review found that distributed practice, "spacing out of study over time", improves results. Return to a topic over several days instead of studying it once.
  • Mixing: a meta-analysis of 59 studies found a moderate overall benefit from mixing examples of different categories instead of practicing them in blocks. The benefit was clearest for visual material such as paintings and small for math tasks; for expository texts the results were unclear, and for word learning blocking did better. The authors concluded that "the setting and the type of learning material must be considered." Mixing related topics is worth trying once you know the basics; it is not a substitute for learning them.

Why this fits the NCLEX

Most NCLEX questions ask you to apply knowledge, not just recall it. NCSBN, which develops the exam, states that "the majority of items are written at the application or higher levels of cognitive ability, which require more complex thought processing. These questions require a candidate to utilize problem-solving skills in order to select the correct answer."

The Next Generation NCLEX (NGN) "launched on April 1, 2023 to better measure nursing candidates' clinical judgment and decision making abilities through the use of innovative item types." The exam includes:

  • Case studies: each is a set of six items about the same client, with unfolding information, covering the six steps of clinical judgment from recognizing cues to evaluating outcomes. Every candidate gets three of them.
  • Stand-alone items that measure clinical judgment in a single item.
  • Several item formats, including multiple response ("select all that apply"). Any item type may include charts, tables and graphics, and items with more than one correct answer can earn partial credit.

NCSBN publishes examples of the item formats in the Candidate Tutorial, the Exam Preview and the Sample Pack on nclex.com. Our article on NCLEX question types walks through them.

What practice questions can't do

Official NCLEX questions are not public, so you will not see ExamReady's questions on your exam. As our FAQ puts it: "The goal is not to memorize exact questions but to develop a deep understanding of the material and improve critical thinking skills." It also recommends using ExamReady "alongside textbooks and coursework for the most comprehensive preparation."

To go deeper, read how to study for the NCLEX, how the NCLEX works and the NCLEX Clinical Judgment Model explained.

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