SUMMARY
ABSTRACT USBN or National Standard School Examination on Pancasila and citizenship education subject at the senior high school level was held for the first time in 2017. The assessment of learning outcomes by teachers, education units (schools), and the government has been inclined towards measuring students’ lower order thinking skills, while the 2013 curriculum dynamics is directed to assessment of learning outcomes that can measure higher order thinking skills (HOTS). As a result, the questions tested in the USBN (National Standard School Examination) should naturally meet the characteristics of HOTS. This research aims to describe the items on the National Standard School Examination on Pancasila and citizenship education subject of the 2016/2017 Academic Year based on the characteristics of HOTS questions in Karawang Regency. It adopted quantitative content analysis method with descriptive content analysis approach. The sampling was done purposively. The research sample was the test items on the National Standard School Examination on Pancasila and civic education subject of the K13-071 code in Karawang Regency. Data were collected through the techniques of documentary study, literature review, and questionnaire distribution. The data were then analyzed with descriptive statistics. The results show that for the main K13-071 items which measure higher order thinking skills (HOTS) according to the three top levels of the cognitive process dimensions of Bloom’s revised Taxonomy, 7 items (15.6%) were found to be concerned with the cognitive processes of analyzing and evaluating, while the dimension of creating was not found. There were 4 HOTS items (8.9%) that used stimuli (basic questions) in the forms of illustrations, case examples, and survey results. The remaining 3 items on HOTS (6.7%) did not use any stimulus. The main items on the test which contain HOTS were still very low in number and limited to using stimuli in the forms of illustrations, case examples, and survey results, while other stimuli in the forms of photos/images, tables/graphs/diagrams, and the like were not used. Keywords: Items of USBN on Pancasila and citizenship education subject, Bloom’s revised Taxonomy, HOTS (higher order thinking skills), HOTS questions’ characteristics.