AP Psychology · Member activity

AAQ practice desk

Read the research design, choose evidence, and explain the connection. Your teacher reviews the thinking behind your response.

Article Analysis Question practice

Read the design before writing the claim.

These original fictional research summaries let you practice the response structure. The real exam uses summarized peer-reviewed research. These prompts and checklists are not an official scoring rubric.

Practice question

Hypothesis to evaluate: spreading practice across separate sessions improves later retention compared with one equal-length session.

Practice source: spacing study sessions

This is a fictional teaching study, not a published or peer-reviewed article. Sixty volunteers ages 18–24 from one college were randomly assigned to two groups. Both groups studied the same material for 20 minutes in total. One group used four 5-minute sessions on separate days; the other used one 20-minute session. One week after the final session, everyone took the same 20-item recall test under the same conditions. The spaced group averaged 15.2 correct responses (SD 2.4); the single-session group averaged 11.4 (SD 2.8). No inferential test result is supplied. Before participating, volunteers received a written explanation and agreed to the procedures. They could withdraw without penalty. Records used codes in place of names, and only grouped findings were reported.

The study descriptions and results are invented practice material. They are not evidence of real research findings.

A / Method

Identify the method and describe a design feature that supports your identification.I used the manipulation and random assignment described in this source.

B / Operational definition

State exactly how the researchers measured later recall.I named the measured outcome, its scale, and when it was measured.

C / Interpret a statistic

Explain what the difference between 15.2 and 11.4 means in this study.I interpreted the means in context without claiming a significance test was reported.

D / Ethical procedure

Identify an ethical guideline actually described in the source and explain the action that applied it.I named a described guideline and the researchers’ specific procedure.

E / Generalization

Explain a limitation on applying these findings to other populations.I linked the limitation to how this specific sample was recruited and who it included.

F / Explain the finding

Explain how a specific result supports or refutes the stated hypothesis.I connected a specific finding to the hypothesis and explained why it supports or refutes it.

0/6 self-checks marked. This count is not an AP score.

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