CritiCall practice test
The test almost every 911 dispatcher, calltaker and telecommunicator applicant sits, published by Biddle Consulting Group. 200 original questions across the four parts of it that can honestly be practised in writing — and straight answers about the parts that cannot.
911 dispatcher practice run
30 questions. 20 minutes.
That is 40 seconds a question. The clock starts when you press the button and submits the test when it runs out. You will not be told whether an answer was right until the end — that is the point of a timed run.
2 free full-length runs left on this test. Unlimited for $24.99, one payment.
Why nobody can tell you how long it is
Most tests keep their question count quiet. CritiCall does not have one. Biddle sells a library of more than twenty separate tests and each hiring agency picks the combination it considers appropriate for its own roles — so the paper sat in one county is not the paper sat in the next, and there is no single number to publish.
That is why every prep site printing “the CritiCall test has N questions in M minutes” has invented both figures. What the publisher does print is a range for the whole session: on average, between one and three hours. The 30-question, 20-minute run above is this site’s practice length, at 40 seconds a question.
One clock is published, and it is the one worth rehearsing: the emergency messages that ask which service to dispatch give you fifteen seconds each, with no credit for a late answer or for sending the wrong service — and they arrive while you are typing something else.
The rules to learn before the day
CritiCall is a work sample test rather than a knowledge test, so there is very little on it you can revise. There is one exception, and the publisher makes a point of it: the candidate booklet sets out four decision rules, tells applicants to learn them before the test, and says the better an applicant knows them, the better they will do on the decision-making parts. Under those rules:
| Send | When |
|---|---|
| Police | Someone is harming another person, attempting or threatening to, or causing damage to another person’s property. |
| Fire | There are immediate signs of a fire in progress such as flames or smoke, a fire alarm is sounding, or a person is trapped or confined and needs to be released. |
| EMS | There is a medical emergency needing intervention by medically trained personnel. |
| Utility | A public water, electricity, home-heating gas or sewer system is broken or malfunctioning — power lines, streetlights and traffic signals included. |
Restated from the decision rules in Biddle Consulting Group’s candidate preparation guide, read on 2 September 2026. The booklet adds the instruction that decides most of the hard items: answer from these four rules alone, and not from anything you know about how a real agency works. That is why a downed power line is a utility call here even where your own city would send three services.
Practise one part at a time
Untimed sets with the explanation immediately after each answer. The timed run tells you what is going wrong; these are where it gets fixed.
Dispatch decisions
Which service goes — police, fire, EMS or the utility company — under the four rules the booklet tells you to learn.
50 questions
Reading comprehension
A short paragraph, then what it said and what follows from it.
50 questions
Spelling and sentence clarity
The words that change the meaning of a record, and the clearest way to write what happened.
50 questions
Data checking
Finding the right record in a list, spotting the character that changed, and the arithmetic the job needs.
50 questions
The parts with no questions here
A third of Biddle’s library is keyboard, headset and map work: typing what you hear into the right field, summarising a call you heard once, holding a plate number in your head for ten seconds, reading a route off a diagram. None of that survives being turned into a multiple-choice question — the imitation would measure reading, and a candidate who practised it would arrive prepared for a test nobody is going to set them.
So there are no questions for those parts on this site. There are pages, because they are real parts of the test and people search for them by name, and each one says what the part is, what the publisher publishes about it, and what genuinely helps.
Data entry and typing
Typing what you hear into the right field, in capitals, while something else is happening.
No question bank — what to expect
Map reading
Reading a route off a deliberately plain map, and placing a caller from what they say.
No question bank — what to expect
Listening, memory and multitasking
The parts that arrive through a headset — call summarisation, short-term recall, and doing two of them at once.
No question bank — what to expect
Where the publisher gives you something free
This is unusual enough in the hiring-test business to be worth stating plainly, and most prep sites do not tell you. Biddle says there is no practice version of CritiCall and that the software goes only to agencies — and then hosts, on its own site, free browser sample tests for three of its modules: keyboarding, proofreading and spelling, individually and as a combined battery. It also publishes a candidate preparation guide, which is where the decision rules above and the field order on the data entry page come from.
Do those first. For those three modules the publisher’s version is the actual interface, and nothing built here could be better than it. They are linked from Biddle’s own applicant page, which is the first source listed at the bottom of this page.
What the free samples do not cover is everything else: the decision rules, cross-referencing, reading under a clock, spotting the character that changed. That is the gap this site was built for.
What your agency may have chosen
Biddle’s classic module list, as it names the modules to the agencies that buy them. Your test will be some of these and not others, and the announcement you applied through is the only place that might say which.
The newer CritiCall3D adds three of its own: an Operational test that folds eight of the classic ones into a single sitting, a Situational judgment test validated for emergency dispatch, and a Behavioral personality assessment, which has no right answers to practise.
Also called
One test, several job titles. Dispatcher, calltaker, 911 operator and public-safety telecommunicator describe different splits of the same work, and the pre-employment test is usually the same product behind all of them.
Frequently asked
- How many questions are on the CritiCall test?
- Nobody can tell you, including Biddle Consulting Group, and the reason is not secrecy. CritiCall is a library of more than twenty modules and each agency selects the ones it considers appropriate for its own roles, so there is no fixed paper to count. The one length figure the publisher does print is a range for the whole session: on average between one and three hours.
- Is there an official CritiCall practice test?
- Not a full one, and Biddle says so outright: there is no practice version of CritiCall, and the software is released only to emergency response agencies and verified private dispatch companies. What it does give applicants free are browser sample tests for three modules — keyboarding, proofreading and spelling — plus a candidate preparation guide. Those are worth doing and are linked below.
- What is the pass mark?
- There is no published one. The agency that bought the test sets its own cut score for its own roles, and Biddle publishes neither a threshold nor a scoring formula. Any site printing "the score you need for CritiCall" has invented it.
- Should I guess if I do not know an answer?
- Yes, and this is the single most useful line in the candidate booklet: you are penalised for skipping questions unless the instructions for that part of the test say otherwise. On several other hiring tests a blank is harmless. Here it is not — answer everything.
- How fast do the emergency decisions come?
- Fifteen seconds each, which the booklet states plainly, and no credit is given for a late answer or for sending the wrong service. They also appear while you are working on something else on the screen, which is the multitasking part of the test rather than a separate section.
- Do I need dispatcher training or experience first?
- No. The booklet says the test measures the underlying skills a person needs before any training they might receive, and that no specialised dispatcher or calltaker knowledge is needed to read, understand or answer the items. It is a work sample test, not a knowledge test.
- Can I retake it if I fail?
- That is the agency’s decision rather than the publisher’s, and Biddle publishes no retake rule. The recruitment announcement you applied through is the document that governs it, and it is a fair question to put to the agency’s recruiter.
- Are these real CritiCall questions?
- No. Every question here is original, written to the format the publisher describes. Biddle states that it cannot release the software or reveal test details in order to protect the security of the test, so anybody advertising real CritiCall items is not telling you the truth about where they came from.
Sources
Every figure on this page comes from one of the documents below, with the date it was read. Requirements change; if a source has moved on since that date, the source is right and this page is out of date.
- CritiCall — Public Safety Communications Pre-Employment Test Preparation Guide (Biddle Consulting Group, 2023, PDF) Read September 2, 2026
- CritiCall — “CritiCall and the Dispatcher Applicant: F.A.Q.” (Biddle Consulting Group, 30 April 2024) Read September 2, 2026
- CritiCall — CritiCall3D and CritiCall Classic Test Descriptions Read September 2, 2026
- CritiCall (Biddle Consulting Group) — Public-Safety Dispatcher / Calltaker Applicants Read September 2, 2026
Hiring Test Practice is independent practice material and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or authorized by Criteria Corp, Wonderlic, Inc., National Testing Network, the electrical training ALLIANCE, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, NECA or Biddle Consulting Group, Inc. CCAT® is a registered trademark of Criteria Corp; Wonderlic® is a registered trademark of Wonderlic, Inc.; CritiCall is a trademark of Biddle Consulting Group, Inc. Test names are used only to describe what this material prepares you for. Every question here is original and none is taken from any actual assessment.