Retaking Advanced Certification Exam

[mrsnow124]

I have taken the Advanced Certification exam twice, and both times the questions were exactly the same. I did not pass and want to take it again, but I feel like I will have a better chance at passing if the questions are different. Are they going to be the exact same every time I take it?

[Mark2010]

Hi mrsnow124,

Actually, the questions were not exactly the same. Some were and maybe that influenced your perception. I reviewed your exam results to be certain that your experience wasn't a fluke and somehow you saw the same form twice. (For the communities benefit, I was able to do so because the poster also reached out to us directly with more information about their identify).

Another alternative if you would like to see a completely different experience would be to take the new A00-232 exam and attempt to earn the new "SAS Certified Professional: Advanced Programming Using SAS 9.4" credential. This exam is performance-based: you will write SAS code during your exam. The original SAS Advanced Programmer exam will not be available after Sept 30.

[SD08]

Hi Mark2010,

I have kind of similar question. I retook the SAS Advanced Programming certification (A00-212) and got the exact same percent correct score both times on the three of the sections. Here are the details for both attempts.

Exam Date: 13-June-2019
Section Name and Score:
Advanced Programming Techniques - 29%

Macro Processing - 65%

Accessing Data Using SQL - 63%

Exam Date: 28-June-2019
Section Name and Score:
Advanced Programming Techniques - 29%

Macro Processing - 65%

Accessing Data Using SQL - 63%

How this can be possible? Can you review the exam result/details for my exam? If you need more info, please contact me personally.

Thank you,

[Mark2010]

SD08 and I will continue that thread in private, but a general comment about exam design.

When creating multiple forms for an exam, the forms must be equated. The topical weightings are the same, the average difficulty of items is similar.

This goal of equating is to ensure that 2 people with the same skill/knowledge taking the 2 different forms will get the same score. Or if 1 person takes multiple forms and their skill/knowledge hasn't changed between the attempts, they would get the same score. We call this Reliability. See also test-retest repeatability.