A question must stand on its own

Every Insporta question can be answered by someone who knows the sport, with no document in front of them. A question that asks what “the text”, “the passage” or “the document” says can only be answered by someone holding that text, so it measures access to a source rather than knowledge. Sources are cited with every question, but never inside the question.

The defect

The most common fault in content written from a single document is that the document leaks into the stem. “According to the content, which drill develops pressing?” “What does the passage recommend for the second phase?” A coach with thirty years of experience cannot answer either, because the answer is whatever that particular document happened to say.

This was the single most common defect in the content Insporta inherited. In a pilot batch of one hundred football questions, 29 referred to the document they were written from; in a legacy level, 150 of 380 did. Every one of them is unanswerable without the source, and every one of them was removed from the ladder. The contrast is useful: a level written under the current rules contained zero such questions in a thousand.

Where the source goes

Each question carries a source field: “IFAB Laws of the Game 2025/26, Law 12”, “MCC Laws of Cricket 2017 code (3rd edition 2022), Law 21”, “World Triathlon Competition Rules 2.2”. That is where the provenance lives, and it is shown with the explanation after the learner answers.

The stem names the sport’s own concepts instead. “Law 12 calls a challenge made with a lack of attention, consideration or precaution by which term?” is a question about football; “the Law” here is the Laws of the Game, which anyone who knows football knows exist. “What does the document call such a challenge?” is a question about a document.

The wider version of the rule

Standing alone also means the question does not depend on a neighbouring question. A learner may see the ten questions of a test in any order, and one question must not supply the fact another one asks for. It also means the stem carries the situation it needs: if a cricket answer depends on the format, the stem says Test, ODI or T20, because a stem that does not name the format usually has more than one correct answer.

Why it matters

Insporta’s claim is that a score reflects knowledge of the sport, as set out in What a question may measure. A document-dependent question breaks that claim silently: the learner who knows the sport best may score worst on it, because they answer from the game rather than from the text. The rule is cheap to follow and cheap to check, and it is one of the first things a batch is checked for, see Fact-checking and quality gates.

The list of sources questions are authored from, and how each is cited, is in Sources we write from.