Field question

Definition

A field question (sometimes called an experimental or unscored question) is a test question that the NYC DOE is evaluating for possible inclusion on future SHSAT exams, but which does not count toward your score on the current test. On the SHSAT, approximately 10 of the 57 questions per section are field questions; the other 47 are scored.

Why field questions exist

Test development requires extensive piloting. Before a new question becomes a scored item, its difficulty, discrimination, and other psychometric properties need to be measured against real test-takers—not just expert reviewers. Field-testing on a live administration produces calibrated data while the new questions don’t actually affect any student’s outcome.

This is standard practice across major standardized tests. The SAT, ACT, GRE, LSAT, MCAT, and many other tests all include experimental items in their live administrations for the same reason.

How field questions affect your score

They don’t. Field questions are explicitly removed from scoring before the raw-to-scaled conversion happens. Your raw score is based on the 47 scored questions, not on all 57. Spending time on field questions doesn’t help your score, but it also doesn’t hurt it — provided you have time for all 47 scored questions.

Can you identify field questions while testing?

No. The NYC DOE doesn’t mark field questions and doesn’t disclose which ones they are. The questions are designed to be indistinguishable from scored questions — same format, same general difficulty range, same subject matter. You have to answer every question as if it counts.

Strategic implications

The practical impact of field questions on your prep strategy:

• You can’t skip questions strategically. Since you can’t tell which are field questions, you have to take every question seriously. Skipping a hard-looking question on the theory it might be a field question is a gamble with bad expected value.
• Pacing matters more. 57 questions in the allotted time means you have roughly 90–100 seconds per question. The 10 field questions consume time even though they don’t count. This is built into the section timing — you’re expected to attempt all 57.
• Don’t obsess over particular questions. If one question seems impossibly hard, it might be a field question that was poorly calibrated. Move on rather than burning 5 minutes on it.

A historical note

The SHSAT has used field questions for many years, including in the pre-CAT paper-based era. The percentage has remained roughly stable at around 17% (10 of 57). With the new CAT format, the underlying purpose of field questions is similar — calibrating new items — but the mechanism is slightly different. CAT systems can introduce new items more flexibly through their item-pool management, but field-testing remains part of test development.

Common misconceptions

“Field questions are at the end of the section.” No. Field questions are distributed throughout the section, mixed with scored questions. There’s no positional pattern you can exploit.

“If I notice a really weird question, it’s a field question and I can skip it.” Unreliable. Questions that seem weird to you might be challenging scored questions. You can’t identify field questions by intuition with any accuracy.

“Field questions are easier or harder than scored questions.” Neither, on average. They’re designed to span the same difficulty range. Individual field questions may be poorly calibrated (which is part of why they’re being tested), but as a category they aren’t systematically easier or harder.