Stated Details and Sequence

Understanding Stated Details and Explicit Information

Paragraph Comprehension is one of the four subtests that make up the Armed Forces Qualification Test score, alongside Arithmetic Reasoning, Mathematics Knowledge, and Word Knowledge. Minimum qualifying test scores are determined independently by each military branch and are subject to change. Excelling in Paragraph Comprehension requires mastering stated detail questions. These questions evaluate your direct ability to locate and understand explicit information written right on the page.

Explicit details are facts directly mentioned by the author rather than implied or suggested. In other words, you do not need to guess or read between the lines to find them. Stated detail questions often begin with phrases such as 'According to the passage' or 'The author states that.' When you encounter these phrases, your mission is to find the exact piece of factual evidence the author provided.

To answer a stated detail question correctly, you must rely entirely on the passage without using outside knowledge. It is easy to fall into the trap of using personal opinions or facts you learned in school, but for stated detail questions, you must not substitute personal opinions or outside facts for what the passage says. In fact, an answer choice can be factually accurate in the real world but still wrong if the passage does not state it. Every correct detail answer on the ASVAB Paragraph Comprehension subtest must have direct, verifiable evidence in the passage.