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Registered Diplomate Reporter (RDR)

Registered Diplomate Reporter

 

What is the RDR?

The Registered Diplomate Reporter (RDR) is NCRA’s highest degree of certification designed for elite reporters desiring to join an exclusive club of reporting excellence.

The court reporting profession's most knowledgeable professionals have the opportunity to prove themselves. If you have exhibited exemplary skills in all areas of court reporting, if you are actively involved in court reporting and served as a consultant or leader in the profession, then you are ready to sit for the Registered Diplomate Reporter Examination.

 

Who is eligible to sit for the RDR Exam?

To sit for the RDR Exam, a candidate must be a RMR and have five current and continuous years of membership commencing with Participating or Registered member status.

How to maintain your RDR certification

As an RDR, you will participate in NCRA's continuing education program. To renew your RDR, you must maintain your NCRA membership and earn 3.0 CEUs over your three-year cycle. You will renew your RPR, RMR, and RDR certifications simultaneously with the same 3.0 CEUs.

In other words, a reporter with RPR, RMR, and RDR certifications will only have to earn a total of 3.0 CEUs over one three-year period to renew all three certifications.

Recognition of your achievement

After you have earned your RDR, you will receive an official certificate to display in your home or office. Your RDR will also be recognized in the Journal of Court Reporting, NCRA PROLink, and on NCRA's website.

CEUs: 0.25 PDCs for passing

 

Testing information

The RDR Exam consists of a 120-question*, multiple-choice Written Knowledge Test that focuses on four areas that come from the RDR Job Analysis:

  • Technology (42%)
  • Industry practices (22%)
  • NCRA, Professionalism, and Ethics (19%)
  • Business practices (17%)

You must receive a scaled score** of 70 or better to pass the exam.

*NCRA pretests items for the RDR Written Knowledge Test (WKT). Pretesting ensures that all items on an examination are items with good statistics and no brand-new, untried items will appear on any test. This means that the WKT will have 120 items instead of 100. These items will not be scored, so the WKT score is only based off 100 items. Candidates will not know which items are pretest items. Candidates have 110 minutes to complete all items on the test.

**Scaled scoring is a means of assuring fairness and consistency in the difficulty level from one test administration to the next, achieved by applying two widely accepted standard-setting methods to each individual test question. NCRA works with Pearson VUE and the Test Advisory Committee to ensure that NCRA's programs continue to meet testing industry standards.

All candidates are required to read the Written Knowledge Test information prior to registering and taking their test.

 

WKT registration and information


Note: Effective January 1, 2025, due to budget constraints, and in an effort to maintain a greener footprint, NCRA will no longer be mailing physical certification certificates to members. Members may download and print their own certificates through the NCRA website. Print certification certificate instructions