Article verified for Release 15.1 on November 19, 2025
This article explains what Question Assistance is, which question types support it, how to enable it in a question’s advanced settings, and how it affects the candidate’s personal report.
What is Question Assistance?
Question Assistance is an optional feature that helps candidates answer questions during a test.
When assistance is available, candidates may choose to use it while answering. However, a penalty will be automatically applied to the score of that question.
Assistance is designed to provide controlled support without giving away the full answer, ensuring scoring remains fair.
Question assistance can include:
-
Hint – provides additional information or a clue.
-
Additional time – adds extra seconds or minutes for that specific question.
-
Minus one wrong answer – automatically removes one incorrect option.
Availability
Question assistance is not available for all question types. It can be used only for question types that support configurable answer options, such as:
-
Single choice
-
Multiple choice
-
True/False
-
Fill-in-the-blank
- Matching
- Open-ended
- Ordering
Note: If assistance is added to a question that allows branching, the branching option will automatically be disabled.
How to Enable Question Assistance
To enable assistance for a question:
-
Navigate to Tests then Question pools.
-
Select the pool that contains the question you want to edit.
-
Open the Questions tab and choose the question.
-
Click Edit, then scroll to the Advanced settings section.
-
Under Assistance, choose one or more assistance types:
-
Hint
-
Enter Hint text
-
Set the penalty
-
-
Additional time
-
Specify duration
-
Set the penalty
-
-
Minus one wrong answer
-
Set the penalty
-
-
-
Save the question.
Important notes:
-
Each assistance type requires a penalty value to be set.
-
If branching is enabled for the question, assistance cannot be used. Adding assistance automatically disables branching.
-
Assistance must be configured individually for each question.
