DSST® practice test

Free DSST Computing and Information Technology Practice Test

This is a set of 25 original practice questions that follow the official DSST Computing and Information Technology content outline and its topic weights, each with a short explanation. Answer all 25, then read the explanations to see which topics need more study.

  • 25 questions
  • 6 topics from the official outline
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The practice test

25 questions

Question 1 of 25Which type of memory loses its contents when the computer's power is turned off?
Question 2 of 25In a spreadsheet, cell C1 contains the formula =A1*$B$1. If the formula is copied to cell C2, what will C2 contain?
Question 3 of 25Which protocol translates a domain name such as example.com into the numeric IP address that computers use to find each other?
Question 4 of 25In the traditional waterfall model of the software development life cycle, which phase comes first?
Question 5 of 25When a computer runs out of physical RAM, the operating system moves some data to a reserved area of the disk and treats it as extra memory. This technique is called
Question 6 of 25Moore's law, in the form Gordon Moore gave it in 1975, predicted that
Question 7 of 25Which database term describes a field whose value uniquely identifies each record in a table?
Question 8 of 25In the binary number system, what is the decimal value of 1011?
Question 9 of 25In a star topology, every device on a local area network is connected to
Question 10 of 25A programmer writes a loop that runs one time too many because she used <= instead of <. What kind of error is this?
Question 11 of 25In word processing, a mail merge is used to
Question 12 of 25A worker uses a program at work to copy music she bought and then shares the copies with friends online. The main ethical and legal issue is
Question 13 of 25Which of the following is an example of an operating system?
Question 14 of 25Which of the following is the fastest way to connect a desktop computer to a home router?
Question 15 of 25In object-oriented programming, hiding an object's internal data so other code can reach it only through the object's methods is called
Question 16 of 25Which part of the CPU carries out arithmetic operations and comparisons such as 'greater than'?
Question 17 of 25In a spreadsheet, which function would you use to find the average of the values in cells B2 through B10?
Question 18 of 25What is the main job of a router on a network?
Question 19 of 25Which kind of program translates an entire program written in a high-level language into machine code before the program is run?
Question 20 of 25Phishing is best described as
Question 21 of 25Which type of application software would a business use to design a newsletter with columns, images and precise page layout?
Question 22 of 25How many bits are in one byte?
Question 23 of 25Writing out the steps of an algorithm in plain, structured English before turning it into code is called
Question 24 of 25In network security, encryption is used mainly to
Question 25 of 25A presentation program lets a user apply a single design so that every slide gets the same fonts, colors and logo. This feature is the

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