What the exam asks
In the Bluebook app, you will read a 1–2 page summary of a single study divided into standard sections: Introduction, Participants (often with a demographic table), Method, Results and Discussion, and a Reference citation. You are given six prompts (Parts A–F) that are always structured around the same core analytical tasks. College Board recommends spending about 25 minutes on the AAQ: roughly 10 minutes reading and analyzing the article, and 15 minutes typing your responses.
Core ideas
Every AAQ part is scored independently. You must write in complete sentences and tie every answer directly to the specific study provided.
| Part | Task & Science Practice | Points | How to earn full credit |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | Research method (Practice 2) | 1 | State whether the study is an experiment, correlational study, case study, naturalistic observation or meta-analysis. Part A accepts only these five methods: if the study also used a survey, or a longitudinal or cross-sectional design, you may say so, but you must still name one of the five. |
| B | Operational definition (Practice 2) | 1 | State exactly how the researchers measured or quantified the named variable in this study (e.g., “score from 0 to 63 on the Beck Depression Inventory” or “number of words recalled”). |
| C | Statistic interpretation (Practice 3) | 1 | Explain what the named statistic (e.g., mean, standard deviation, , -value, effect size) indicates in the context of the study’s variables, not just the raw numbers. |
| D | Ethical guideline (Practice 2) | 1 | Name one ethical guideline explicitly described in the text (e.g., institutional review, informed consent, assent, confidentiality, protection from harm, debriefing) AND describe how the researchers applied it. |
| E | Generalizability (Practice 2) | 1 | State whether the findings can or cannot be generalized to a broader or specific population, backed by specific participant demographic variables from the study (e.g., age, gender, race, nationality, clinical status). |
| F | Argumentation (Practice 4) | 2 | 2 points: use a specific result from the study, read correctly, to explain how or why it supports or refutes the stated hypothesis or psychological concept. 1 point: a result with no explanation, an explanation with no result, or an explanation that misreads the result. |
Deep dive into Parts C, E, and F
- Part C (Statistics): Never just copy the numbers from the table. If asked about a mean, state which group performed higher or lower on the measured variable on average. If asked about statistical significance (), state that the difference or relationship between the named variables is unlikely to be due to chance (less than a 5% probability). If asked about a correlation coefficient (), describe both the direction (positive/negative) and strength of the relationship between the two named variables.
- Part E (Generalizability): Look directly at the Participants section or table. If 88% of participants are female undergraduate students at one university, state: “The findings are not generalizable to the general population because the sample consisted predominantly of female undergraduate students from a single university.” Mentioning sample size (), reliability, or validity earns 0 points here.
- Part F (2 points): Bridge the data to the theory. First, state what the data showed in relation to the groups or variables (1 point). Second, connect that finding to the psychological concept or hypothesis named in the prompt to explain why it supports or refutes it (1 point).