Psychology
Eight Domains,
Four Hours and a Quarter
The EPPP® at 225 questions on the 200–800 scale with 500 to pass — plus your state’s psychology law exam, which is a different test with a different job.
Research and statistics worked step by step, with a trace you can check. Not an answer letter and a shrug.
225 items, 4 hours 15
The Examination, as Published
175 of the items are scored and 50 are not, and you are not told which is which.
Reported on a 200–800 scale, with 500 to pass for independent practice.
The eight domains and their published weights:
| Assessment and Diagnosis | 16% |
|---|---|
| Ethical, Legal and Professional Issues | 16% |
| Treatment, Intervention, Prevention and Supervision | 15% |
| Cognitive-Affective Bases of Behavior | 13% |
| Growth and Lifespan Development | 12% |
| Social and Cultural Bases of Behavior | 11% |
| Biological Bases of Behavior | 10% |
| Research Methods and Statistics | 7% |
From the published candidate handbook as of August 2026. A lower cut score of 450 applies in jurisdictions that license at the supervised-practice level. Attempts are capped at four in any twelve-month period, and the fee runs to roughly $700 an attempt once the administration charge is included — which is the single strongest argument in this profession for not sitting it early to see how it goes. The board’s handbook is the authority on all of it.
Seven percent is still sixteen questions. Research methods and statistics is the smallest domain and the one candidates most reliably decide to write off — and sixteen items is a wide enough margin to fail on. It is also the most learnable material on the whole examination, because unlike a judgment item it has a right answer you can derive rather than recognize.
Research and statistics
Statistics You Can Check,
Not an Answer Letter
Every product in this category hands you the correct option and a sentence of justification.
That works when you already understand it, which is not the situation you are in.
You work it a step at a time
Enter the step rather than the final answer — which test the design calls for, what the degrees of freedom are, what the error term is. The structure of the problem is the thing being learned.
It stops you at the step that went wrong
Not “incorrect” against a final option, which tells you nothing about where you lost it. The step where your reasoning diverged, named.
It explains the principle, not the arithmetic
Why that design rules out that test, why the correction applies, what the assumption you skipped was actually doing. The computation was probably fine.
Then the same shape with different numbers
Immediately, while the correction is live, and again later once you have had time to forget it. Which is the difference between understanding a method and having watched one.
Design, validity and reliability
The threats to internal and external validity as things that happen to a study rather than as a list to recite, and the reliability and validity coefficients with what each one is actually claiming.
Tests, effects and power
Choosing the test the design permits, reading an effect size for what it means rather than whether it is significant, and the relationship between power, sample size and the error you are willing to make.
Psychometrics as the exam asks it
Standardization, norms, standard error of measurement, and the score-interpretation questions that sit in the assessment domain rather than the statistics one — which is where most of the psychometrics actually is.
Never the same numbers twice
Composed rather than drawn from a bank, so you cannot pattern-match your way to a right answer. If you can do it, you can do it with numbers you have not seen.
A third of the exam
The Bases of Behavior,
at the Depth This Exam Reaches
Biological, cognitive-affective and social-cultural together are a third of the items — and they are the material furthest from most candidates’ clinical training.
Biological bases
Neuroanatomy and neurotransmission, the sensory and motor systems, the endocrine and stress systems, and genetics — taught properly rather than as a glossary, because the items ask you to reason from mechanism.
Psychopharmacology
The medication classes, what they act on, the side effects that bring somebody back to your office, and the referral conversation — including where the boundary of your own scope sits, which the ethics domain then asks about.
Cognitive and affective bases
Learning, memory, attention, language, emotion and motivation — the experimental foundations, at the level the examination assumes you retained from a doctoral curriculum you may have finished some years ago.
Social and cultural bases
Social cognition, attitudes, group processes and influence, plus the cultural material the examination treats as core competence rather than as a specialty topic.
On the diagnostic manual: the assessment and diagnosis domain is the joint-largest on this examination, and the classification it uses belongs to the American Psychiatric Association — a different organization from the American Psychological Association, which is why neither is ever called a bare “APA” here. Its criteria are not ours to reproduce, so the diagnostic material is written in our own words and cites its source. Paraphrase is the lawful posture and, for learning to apply a criterion rather than recite it, the more useful one.
A different test entirely
Then Your State’s Law Exam
The national examination tests the discipline. The state exam tests your practice act — and it is short, cheap, and perfectly capable of delaying a license.
| State | Its law exam, as published |
|---|---|
| California | The state’s own psychology law and ethics examination, at a fee of $127. |
| Texas | 100 items, passing at 85 percent, at a fee of $39 — a high bar on a short test, which is a combination worth respecting. |
| Florida | 40 items with 32 required to pass, at a fee of $115. |
| Elsewhere | Many states require a jurisprudence exam of their own and some do not; several fold the material into an oral or a supervised-practice review instead. Your board is the authority. |
Published figures as of August 2026; fees and formats change. See the state page for how the jurisdiction material is built and which states are covered.
About These Exams
What about the combined examination that was announced?
Is the attempt limit really four a year?
Is the statistics section worth the effort for seven percent?
Do you quote the diagnostic manual?
Does the national exam cover my state's law?
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