About Groundwork

Groundwork is made by a small, independent team — not a publisher with a catalogue of exams to sell. The ASWB exams are the only thing this site is about. That focus is deliberate: one exam, one resource, built by people who care whether you pass rather than how many subjects they can cover. A licensed social worker reviews the questions for clinical accuracy, and the site is kept lean on purpose — fast to load, nothing tracking you, no clutter between you and the next question.

The name is the idea. Passing the exam is groundwork: the foundation a career stands on, laid one honest hour of practice at a time. We wanted a place that treated that work with the seriousness it deserves and none of the hype it usually attracts.

Most ASWB prep stops at the content. It teaches you the theorists, the diagnostic criteria and the intervention models, then leaves you to discover, on the day, that the exam is also a physical event. You sit at a Pearson VUE workstation and work through vignette after vignette, one screen at a time, for a long block that asks as much of your stamina as of your recall. The fatigue is real: late in the session your reading slows, you re-read the same option twice, and a question you would have answered cleanly in the first hour starts to blur.

Groundwork was built by people who felt that grind and decided the practice should rehearse it, not just the facts. That is why the quiz runs one question at a time, keeps a full explanation on every answer, and rewards the reader who can stay sharp through a long stretch — the way the real thing does.

There are two ways to drill, both built on the same idea. On this site, the free ASWB practice test runs a shared pool of ASWB-style questions spanning all four content areas; you can filter to the area you want to work and read a full explanation after every answer — no account, no paywall to begin. When you want the same practice in your pocket between shifts and classes, there is a Groundwork iOS app. There is no Android app yet, so on Android or a desktop you stay on the free on-site quiz, which costs you nothing and loses you nothing. If you would rather start with the concepts first, the study guide walks the four content areas topic by topic before you test yourself.

A word on who we are not. The Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) is the private, non-profit body whose exams gate your state or provincial licence — it is not a government agency, and it is not us. The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) is a different organisation again: a professional membership body, not the exam board. Groundwork is affiliated with neither, endorsed by neither, and connected to neither.

The ASWB exams themselves are mid a 2026 blueprint transition, which means specifics move: the number of questions, the timing, the fee, scoring and the rules in your jurisdiction are all set by others and change over time. When you need the authoritative word on any of that, the source is aswb.org and the ASWB Examination Guidebook — confirmed with your own licensing board — never a prep site, this one included. What is stable, and safe to plan around, is the shape of it: four exam levels (Bachelors, Masters, Advanced Generalist and Clinical), delivered at Pearson VUE test centres across the US and Canada.