These are ten practice questions for the ASWB Masters exam, the exam most states require for the LMSW. We wrote them for this post, to the content outline that took effect on August 3, 2026, and each comes with its answer and the reason every other option is wrong. Answer all ten before you read any of the answers.
They are not ASWB questions, and they do not reproduce any. The only practice questions built from items used on past exams are in ASWB's own practice test, US$85, sold to registered candidates. These follow ASWB's published rules for how a question is built, closely enough to show the reasoning the real ones reward.
How these ten are built
- The mix follows the Masters outline. Values and Ethics is 35% of the Masters exam, Assessment and Planning 33%, and Intervention and Practice 32%. Four questions below come from the first area and three from each of the others.
- Three test Masters-only material. Five statements are on the Masters outline and not the Clinical one. Questions 8, 9 and 10 test three of them: community organizing, permanency planning, and methods for evaluating practice effectiveness. The Masters exam reaches further into communities and agencies than the Clinical exam does, and these are the questions that show it.
- Four have three options. ASWB's August 2026 Guidebook says the exam "may contain both three- and four-option questions." What one fewer option changes has its own post.
- One answer is correct, and the qualifier matters. ASWB never uses "All of the above" or combinations, its wrong options are written to be plausible, and FIRST, BEST and MOST often decide the question.
Give yourself about two minutes a question: four hours for 122 questions is the exam's own pace.
The questions
Values and Ethics, questions 1 to 4
1. The patient who wants to go home
A hospital social worker is planning the discharge of an 80-year-old patient with moderate dementia. The medical team has found that the patient lacks the capacity to make the decision, and the patient's daughter is the patient's health care agent. The patient says, "I want to go home." What should the social worker do?
- A. Plan a discharge home, because the patient has stated a clear wish.
- B. Ask the medical team to decide where the patient will go.
- C. Plan the discharge with the daughter, making sure she hears what the patient wants.
2. Six weeks' notice
A social worker has accepted a job at another agency and will leave in six weeks. What should the social worker do FIRST?
- A. Tell clients about the departure and discuss their options for continuing services.
- B. Wait until the final week to tell clients, to avoid disrupting their progress.
- C. Invite clients to follow the social worker to the new agency.
3. The offer to interpret
A client who is Deaf and uses American Sign Language comes to an agency for counseling. The agency director suggests exchanging written notes to avoid the cost of an interpreter, and the client's 12-year-old daughter offers to interpret instead. What should the social worker do?
- A. Communicate in writing, since the client reads English.
- B. Accept the daughter's offer, since the client trusts her.
- C. Postpone counseling until the budget can cover an interpreter.
- D. Arrange for a qualified sign language interpreter.
4. A year of trauma work
After a year with a caseload made up mostly of trauma survivors, a social worker notices dreading sessions, feeling numb toward clients, and snapping at colleagues. What should the social worker do FIRST?
- A. Ask to transfer all trauma cases to colleagues.
- B. Discuss these changes with the supervisor and plan how to address them.
- C. Take a leave of absence until the feelings pass.
- D. Keep working and see whether the feelings fade.
Assessment and Planning, questions 5 to 7
5. A parent's mention, in passing
During a home visit, a parent mentions that their 18-month-old does not point to show them things and is not saying any words yet. What should the social worker do?
- A. Reassure the parent that children develop at different rates.
- B. Suggest waiting until the child's second birthday before doing anything.
- C. Encourage the parent to talk with the child's doctor about a developmental screening.
6. The first question about drinking
A social worker beginning an assessment wants to learn about a new client's use of alcohol. Which question is BEST to start with?
- A. "Tell me about the part alcohol plays in your life."
- B. "How many drinks do you have on a typical day?"
- C. "You don't drink every day, do you?"
- D. "Why do you drink as much as you do?"
7. One page for every connection
A social worker wants a single diagram showing a client's connections to outside systems, such as work, school, a place of worship and other agencies, including which connections are strong, weak or stressful. Which tool is BEST?
- A. Genogram
- B. Ecomap
- C. Sociogram
- D. Life history timeline
Intervention and Practice, questions 8 to 10
8. The march to city hall
Residents of a neighborhood whose water has tested high for lead organize a march to city hall and demand that the city council pay to replace the pipes. This is BEST described as which model of community practice?
- A. Locality development
- B. Social action
- C. Social planning
9. A three-year-old in care
A 3-year-old enters foster care after neglect. The parent did not complete the services offered in two earlier cases. Which permanency approach is BEST?
- A. Work only toward reunification until it is clearly impossible.
- B. Move toward adoption now, given the parent's history.
- C. Work toward reunification while also developing an alternative permanent plan.
- D. Plan for long-term foster care until the child is older.
10. Did the group work?
A social worker wants to know whether a new 10-week anger management group reduces participants' angry outbursts. Which approach is BEST?
- A. Ask participants at the last session whether they found the group helpful.
- B. Count how many sessions each participant attended.
- C. Ask the group facilitators for their impressions of each participant's progress.
- D. Measure each participant's outbursts before the group begins and again after it ends.
Answers and reasoning
1. C: plan with the health care agent
The patient lacks capacity for this decision, and there is a health care agent, so the daughter now makes it. The social worker's job is to see that the patient's own wish is heard in that decision: the NASW Code asks social workers acting for clients who lack decision-making capacity to take reasonable steps to safeguard their interests and rights (standard 1.14). A treats a stated wish as an informed decision when capacity is absent. B hands the decision to people who do not hold it.
Tests legal and ethical issues in surrogate decision-making. Chapter: Ethical Service Delivery.
2. A: tell clients now, and discuss options
The Code asks social workers who anticipate ending services to notify clients promptly, and those leaving an employment setting to inform clients of the appropriate options for continuing services, with the benefits and risks of each (standard 1.17(e) and (f)). Six weeks is time to do that well. B is the opposite of prompt. C turns a professional transition into recruitment, and the choice of where to continue belongs to the client, informed by every option, not only the social worker's new job.
Tests termination. Chapter: Ethical Service Delivery.
3. D: arrange a qualified interpreter
Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, responsibility for effective communication sits with the agency, which cannot require a client to bring someone to interpret. The federal guidance is specific about children: a minor may be relied on to interpret only in an emergency involving an imminent threat, when no qualified interpreter is available. Counseling is long and complex communication, which written notes (A) rarely carry well. B uses a child to carry her parent's counseling. C delays a service the client is entitled to now.
Tests accessibility. Chapter: Diversity and Social Justice.
4. B: take it to supervision
Dread, numbness toward clients and irritability after sustained trauma work are warning signs of burnout and secondary traumatic stress, and the first move is to name them to a supervisor and make a plan, which may include caseload changes and self-care. The 2021 NASW Code puts it plainly: "Professional self-care is paramount for competent and ethical social work practice." A and C may become part of the plan, but neither is the first step. D waits for a problem that tends to grow.
Tests burnout. Free lesson: burnout.
5. C: encourage a developmental screening
By 18 months, the CDC's milestones include pointing to show you something interesting and trying to say three or more words besides "mama" or "dada." When a milestone is missing, the CDC's advice is to act early: talk with the child's doctor, ask about developmental screening, and contact the state's early intervention program if concerns remain. A and B both wait, and early intervention works best early.
Tests typical and atypical development. Chapter: Assessment Concepts.
6. A: open the door before you measure
An open-ended invitation lets the client describe their own relationship with alcohol, and it gives the social worker more to work with than any number. B is a fair question later, once rapport allows it. C is leading: it signals the answer the social worker hopes to hear. D asks "why," which tends to sound like an accusation and invites defensiveness.
Tests interviewing techniques. Chapter: Assessment Methods and Techniques.
7. B: ecomap
An ecomap maps a person or family's connections to outside systems and marks each one as strong, weak or stressful. A genogram (A) maps a family across generations. A sociogram (C) maps relationships among the members of a group. A timeline (D) orders events in time.
Tests assessment tools and mapping methods. Chapter: Assessment Methods and Techniques.
8. B: social action
Jack Rothman's three models, first set out around 1970, remain one of the most influential ways of describing community practice. Social action organizes a disadvantaged group to make demands on those with power, often through confrontation, which is what a march with a demand is. Locality development (A) builds a community's own capacity through broad participation and cooperation. Social planning (C) treats a problem as a technical task for experts to analyze and solve. This statement is on the Masters outline and not the Clinical one.
Tests community organizing. Chapter: Practice Concepts.
9. C: concurrent planning
Concurrent planning keeps reunification as the main goal while an alternative permanent plan, such as adoption or guardianship, is developed at the same time, so that a child does not wait in care for one plan to fail before the next one starts. A is that wait. B abandons reunification before the parent has had a chance in this case. D chooses impermanence for a three-year-old. Permanency planning is on the Masters outline and not the Clinical one.
Tests permanency planning. Chapter: Practice Concepts.
10. D: measure before and after
To know whether outbursts went down, measure outbursts, before the group and after it, with the same measure. Satisfaction (A) is not outcome. Attendance (B) measures participation, not change. Facilitators' impressions (C) are informal and come from the people with the most stake in the result. A simple pretest and posttest does not prove the group caused the change, but it is the only option here that measures the change at all. This statement, too, is on the Masters outline and not the Clinical one.
Tests methods for evaluating practice effectiveness. Chapter: Practice Evaluation and Research.
What your score on ten tells you
Very little on its own. Ten questions is too small a sample to predict a result: one misread stem moves you ten points. ASWB says the passing score generally ranges from 66 to 78 correct answers out of 110 scored questions, roughly 60% to 71% depending on the version. How the exam is scored explains why it is a range, how hard the exam is sets out what the pass rates show, and how to know you are ready covers what a better signal looks like.
What ten questions are good for is finding the rule you have not learned yet. If question 8, 9 or 10 caught you, note that all three test statements that are absent from the Clinical outline, so they are easy to miss if you prepare mainly from clinical material.
The rules behind the ten
- When a client lacks capacity, the lawful decision-maker decides, and the client's voice still goes into the decision (question 1).
- Leaving is a process: notify early and lay out every option (2).
- Communication access is the agency's job, and children do not interpret (3).
- Warning signs in yourself go to supervision first (4).
- A missed milestone calls for screening, not reassurance (5).
- Open questions first, numbers later (6).
- Know each tool by what it maps (7).
- Know each community model by how it treats power (8).
- Plan for reunification and permanence at the same time (9).
- Evaluate outcomes by measuring the outcome (10).
More questions like these
- Free, no account: the quick quiz, worked questions with a full explanation of every option such as this one on legal and ethical issues, and all of chapter 1.
- The Clinical counterpart: LCSW exam practice questions, ten more, written to the Clinical outline.
- The theories behind the answers: a cheat sheet of the models that still decide ASWB questions.
- The Masters exam in full: how to pass the LMSW exam, and every statement on the Masters outline, each with its own lesson and questions.
Facts checked October 15, 2026: the NASW Code of Ethics (2021) standards 1.14, 1.17(e) and (f) and its purpose statement; the U.S. Department of Justice's ADA guidance on effective communication (updated February 28, 2020); the CDC's 18-month milestones (reviewed May 16, 2026); the Child Welfare Information Gateway's bulletin on concurrent planning (2026); Rothman's models as summarized in the City of Calgary's community assessment handbook; ASWB's Examination Guidebook (August 2026) and exam scoring page. These questions are written for practice; they are not ASWB questions. ASWB Master is independent and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by or approved by the Association of Social Work Boards.