Free Practice Questions for NBCC NCE-ABE Exam

In the Counseling and Helping Relationships core area, CACREP includes knowledge of major counseling theories, including Reality Therapy/Choice Theory. Reality therapy emphasizes:

Personal responsibility for choices and behaviors

Focus on current behavior rather than the past

Collaborative evaluation of whether the client’s behavior is helping them meet their needs

The counselor’s role is not to act as an authority who fixes the client, but as a collaborative partner who:

Builds a warm, involved relationship

Helps the client evaluate their own behavior

Encourages the client to accept responsibility and make more effective choices

Therefore:

Option A (consultant solving problems) is too expert-driven and takes responsibility away from the client.

Option B (effective listener) is necessary but does not capture the responsibility-focused, collaborative nature of reality therapy.

Option C (parental surrogate) conflicts with the reality therapy emphasis on adult responsibility, not dependency.

The best description of the reality therapy counselor’s role is D. A partner who helps the client accept behavioral responsibility.

In Counseling and Helping Relationships, counselors are trained in behavioral and cognitive-behavioral interventions such as systematic desensitization. This technique involves:

Developing a fear hierarchy (e.g., levels of anxiety for social situations),

Teaching relaxation or coping skills, and

Gradually pairing relaxation with exposure to feared situations.

Client progress is often measured using Subjective Units of Discomfort/Distress (SUDS) ratings. When the intervention is effective, the client’s SUDS ratings for the same stimulus (e.g., attending a social event) decrease over time.

A decrease from 70 to 60 (Option A) indicates that the client experiences less anxiety in that situation, which is evidence that systematic desensitization is working.

An increase from 60 to 70 (Option B) shows worsening anxiety.

Reactivity due to being observed or keeping a diary (Options C and D) refers to measurement reactivity or the Hawthorne effect, not to successful treatment outcomes.

Therefore, the best indicator that systematic desensitization is working is the decrease in SUDS rating, making A the correct answer.

Within Human Growth and Development, counselors are trained to understand how individuals adapt and sometimes grow in response to trauma. Post-traumatic growth is conceptualized not merely as “positive thinking,” but as a process and outcome in which people:

Engage in adaptive coping after trauma,

Do meaning making about what happened,

Experience personal growth (e.g., deeper relationships, new life priorities, greater appreciation of life).

Option B captures this standard definition: it emphasizes both process (coping and meaning making) and outcome (personal growth) following traumatic experiences.

Options A, C, and D are incomplete or overly simplistic—focusing on theory labels or “positivity” rather than the well-established process/outcome framework used in counseling literature and CACREP-aligned training.

The Social and Cultural Diversity core area emphasizes that counselors must develop culturally responsive interventions and treatment plans that consider clients’ cultural identities, including religion and spirituality. CACREP-aligned training highlights:

The importance of integrating clients’ cultural values, beliefs, and practices into treatment,

Respecting clients’ spiritual and religious traditions as meaningful components of identity, and

Using culturally congruent resources and supports in counseling goals and interventions.

Looking at the options:

A. Continuous monitoring to maintain rapport – Good general counseling practice, but not specifically an example of addressing diversity in treatment objectives.

B. Assessing individual and family dynamics – Important for case conceptualization, but still not explicitly diversity-focused unless clearly tied to culture.

D. Measuring the client's beliefs of societal systems – This may be part of multicultural assessment, but it is more evaluative than clearly a treatment objective that incorporates diverse resources.

C. Including spiritual and religious resources – Directly exemplifies integrating cultural, spiritual, and religious dimensions into treatment objectives, which is exactly what multicultural counseling competency requires.

Therefore, C (including spiritual and religious resources) is the best example of explicitly addressing diversity in treatment objectives.

In the Assessment and Testing core area, counselors are required to understand different types of observational and documentation methods used to gather data about client behavior:

An anecdotal report (or anecdotal record) is a narrative, descriptive account of a specific incident or event, written in the observer’s own words. It is inherently subjective and focuses on describing what the client did or said in a particular context. This matches the stem exactly, so Option D is correct.

A rating scale (Option A) involves assigning numerical or descriptive ratings (e.g., “never,” “sometimes,” “often”) to specific behaviors or traits; it is not a narrative description.

A checklist (Option B) is a list of behaviors or characteristics where the observer simply marks whether each behavior was observed; it is not a written narrative.

A cumulative folder (Option C) is a collection of records and documents (e.g., grades, test scores, reports) that summarize a student’s or client’s history over time; it is not a single narrative observation.

Thus, the term that best fits a subjective, narrative description of behavior in a specific situation is anecdotal report (D).

Within the Assessment and Testing core area, counselors are expected to understand and correctly use basic statistical concepts, including measures of central tendency and variability.

The median is defined as the score that divides a distribution into two equal halves, with 50% of the scores falling above it and 50% below it. This is exactly what the question is asking: the value that separates the top half of the scores from the bottom half.

The mode is the most frequently occurring score in a distribution and does not necessarily divide the distribution into equal halves.

The mean is the arithmetic average of the scores and can be influenced by extreme scores; it does not, by definition, guarantee that half the scores are above and half below.

The semi-interquartile range is a measure of variability (spread), not a measure of central tendency. It represents half the distance between the first and third quartiles.

Because the median is the statistic that separates the upper 50% of scores from the lower 50%, A (Median) is the correct answer.

Within the Assessment and Testing core area, counselors are expected to understand measures of central tendency (mean, median, mode) and how they relate to the shape of a distribution. When the mode is higher than the mean (mode = 115, mean = 110), this suggests a negatively skewed distribution, meaning that:

There are some relatively low scores pulling the mean downward.

The most frequent score (mode) is higher than the average score.

From this pattern, it is reasonable to infer that a few very low scores are present, which is reflected in option A.

Option B (“most students scored below the mean”) is not necessarily true; in skewed distributions, many scores may actually be above the mean.

Option C (calculation error) is not supported by the information; mean and mode do not have to be equal.

Option D (high reliability) cannot be inferred from central tendency measures; reliability relates to consistency of measurement (e.g., test–retest, internal consistency), not mean vs. mode relationships.

Thus, the best conclusion consistent with assessment principles is A. A few students showed very low intelligence scores.

Under Professional Counseling Orientation and Ethical Practice, CACREP-aligned ethics stress that:

Counselors have a clear duty to protect confidentiality,

But in group counseling, the leader cannot ethically guarantee that other members will maintain confidentiality.

The counselor must explain the limits of confidentiality and encourage members to honor group privacy.

Therefore, the group leader’s ethical obligation is to strongly encourage members not to share group discussions outside the group and to educate them about the importance and rationale for confidentiality. This is captured by Option B.

Option A is unethical because no counselor can guarantee that other members will keep information confidential.

Option C incorrectly suggests members should limit sharing only to non-counseling details, which is not how confidentiality is framed; the focus is on not sharing other members’ counseling-related disclosures.

Option D weakens the standard by suggesting that some sharing is acceptable if “discreet,” which conflicts with the usual ethical guidance to avoid sharing group members’ personal information at all.

Thus, B best reflects the ethical obligation of a group leader regarding confidentiality.

Within Counseling and Helping Relationships, CACREP emphasizes knowledge of counseling theories, including cognitive and cognitive-behavioral approaches.

In cognitive theory of depression (commonly associated with Aaron Beck):

Depression is understood as being driven primarily by maladaptive cognitions, such as negative automatic thoughts, faulty assumptions, and dysfunctional core beliefs.

These cognitive distortions (e.g., all-or-nothing thinking, overgeneralization, catastrophizing) shape how clients interpret events, leading to depressive feelings and behaviors.

While factors like biochemical changes and neuropathology (Options B and D) can play a role in depression from a medical or biological perspective, cognitive theory specifically emphasizes that it is the patterns of distorted thinking that are central to the development and maintenance of depressive symptoms.

Conditioned reactions (Option A) are more strongly associated with behavioral and learning theories, not the core principle of cognitive theory.

Therefore, in cognitive theory of depression, symptoms are primarily viewed as the result of distortions in thinking, making C the correct answer.

This question falls under Professional Counseling Orientation and Ethical Practice, especially ethical standards, professional responsibility, and client rights.

Option A – Using techniques without prior trainingEthical standards require counselors to practice within the boundaries of their competence, which is based on education, training, supervised experience, and appropriate professional experience. Using counseling techniques for which the counselor has no prior training or competence violates these standards and may place clients at risk. This breaches ethical practice.

Option B – Imposing personal valuesCounselors are expected to avoid imposing their own values, attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors on clients, especially when such imposition may interfere with the counseling process or clients’ autonomy. Ethically, counselors must respect the dignity and autonomy of clients and support their ability to make their own decisions. Imposing the counselor’s personal values is clearly unethical.

Option C – Charging higher fees than others in the areaEthical codes state that counselors must establish fees that are consistent with accepted professional practices, explain fees and billing to clients in advance, and avoid exploitation of clients. However, it is not an ethical requirement that a counselor’s fees match or be similar to other providers’ fees in the area.A counselor may charge higher fees if:

The fees are clearly disclosed to the client beforehand,

The client agrees voluntarily, and

The fee structure is not exploitative or fraudulent.Therefore, simply charging higher fees than others does not, by itself, constitute an ethical violation, making C the correct answer.

Option D – Disclosing notes and records without permissionEthical standards emphasize confidentiality as a core duty. Counselors must not disclose client information, counseling notes, or records without the client’s informed consent, except under specific legal or ethical exceptions (e.g., risk of harm, court order, etc.). Disclosing records without permission generally breaches confidentiality and ethical practice.

Because A, B, and D all represent clear ethical violations, while C describes something that is not inherently unethical when done transparently and non-exploitatively, the only option that does not breach ethical counseling practice standards is C.