Abstract: Social Worker’s Professional Level Examination (SWPLE) has been administered for 14 years since 2008, with a cumulative total of approximately 200,000 people having earned the relevatn certificates. To examine the content validity of this authoritative test, this study draws on Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives and Anderson and colleagues’ revisions as the frame. Adopting quantitative content analysis, this study analyzes the knowledge categories and cognition processes of the items of the three courses of SWPLE during 2008-2021, including the Intermediate Level Social Work Comprehensive Competence Test (ILSWCCT), the Intermediate Level Social Work Practice Competence Test (ILSWPCT), and the Social Work Law and Policy (SWLP). The results reveal that the SWPLE test mainly examines declarative knowledge (i.e., theorical knowledge) rather than procedural knowledge (i.e., practice knowledge); SWPLE mainly tests the cognitive processes at a lower level such as memorization, and ignores to examine more advanced cognitive processes (such as analysis, evaluation and application). These findings indicate that SWPLE does not examine what it claims to examine and is not a valid test. These findings have significant implications for the promotion of validity of SWPLE.

Key words: Social Worker’s Professional Level Examination, content validity, content analysis, longitudinal analysis