• A good AP grade may indicate that the student would benefit from entering a more advanced course than the usual first-year courses. In order to examine whether this use of AP grades is valid, studies are carried out to see how students with a given AP grade performed in the advanced college course. If they consistently succeeded in that course, it would seem reasonable to interpret those AP grade levels as an indication that the students have the prerequisite skills for that college course.
• An AP grade may also indicate that the student should receive credit for a college course that he or she has not taken. To check the validity of such decisions, studies are conducted in which the AP Exam is administered to students taking the college courses in question. The college students' grades on the AP Exam are then compared with their grades in the college course.

In addition to measuring the validity of placement and credit decisions, the AP Program conducts studies on the difficulty of college courses. These demonstrate to what extent AP Exam grades correspond to specific levels of college academic work.

Finally, the AP Program is a series of courses of instruction with identifiable content and skills acquisition goals. An evaluation of the AP Exam must look at it as part of an overall program and not as an end in itself. In addition, it is important to look at other program evaluation when assessing the effectiveness and appropriateness of the exams and the AP Program. Some of these data will include perceptions of students who experienced both an AP course and related courses at the college level.

Key Validity Issues
Achievement of AP and Non-AP Students
AP Grades as Indicators of Appropriate Placement
College Students' Perceptions of the AP Program
Summary

Key Validity Issues

• In 1986, Willingham and Morris identified many of the critical questions concerning the empirical validity of the AP Exams. These included:
  • Are the standards and the credit policies in individual subjects well set?
  • Do students who receive advanced placement produce satisfactory work in the succeeding course?
  • How do AP students compare with their classmates when they enter college?
  • How do AP students progress through college after the first year?
  • If AP students are more able than the average college freshman, how well do they live up to their promise?
• Empirical validation often involves finding the relationship between exam grades and criteria of academic achievement. Because there is a large diversity of participating colleges and universities, there is a correspondingly broad array of academic criteria to which the exam grades need to relate. For example, the criteria might be college course grades (both in the specific AP subject area and over all subject areas), selection of a subject as a college major, motivation to take additional coursework, number of courses passed, and academic acceleration. Moreover, the precise definition of each criterion differs from institution to institution.
• Students who choose to take the AP Exams are, at many schools, a self-selected group. Several studies suggest that this selection process is carried further by the colleges in which these students enroll, through the granting of college credit and assignment to advanced courses. The end result is a highly selected group of college students who, if their AP grades are valid indicators of achievement in their respective subject areas, should be expected to show relatively high levels of accomplishment and motivation in their related college work. The demonstration that AP students do, in fact, achieve at a higher level than their non-AP college classmates represents one of the approaches to the validation of the AP Exams appearing in the research literature.
• The demands on the AP Program go beyond the appropriate selection of students for advanced placement and/or credit. It is also necessary that the exam grades be aligned with the difficulty of the college courses. Demonstrating that exam grades correspond to specific levels of college academic work represents a second approach to validating the AP Exams.

Achievement of AP and Non-AP Students
If the AP Exams have validity with respect to subsequent college achievement, it might be expected that students who have participated in the AP Program in secondary school would equal or exceed the achievement of their non-AP college classmates. This outcome would result from the tendency of the more able high school students to take the AP Exams. It should be recognized, however, that some higher-scoring examinees may be placed in higher-level, more demanding courses, which in turn may result in lower grades than they might otherwise have received in lower-level courses. This event would, of course, tend to decrease the differences in grades awarded to students who did and did not participate in the AP Program in secondary school.

Go to "More" at the bottom of this page to read about research papers relating to studies of AP and non-AP students.

AP Grades as Indicators of Appropriate Placement
The degree to which various AP grades correspond to specific levels of college course placement and college course grades is a critical aspect of validity. Colleges that wish to offer students advanced placement opportunities must be sure that these opportunities are appropriate to each student's level of advancement.

A series of studies has been done to investigate the alignment of AP grades and course levels in each of several subject areas. The focus of this group of studies is on the relative difficulty of the various AP Exams to college students, and the comparison of their results to those of secondary school students who took the exam as part of their school's AP program.

Every year, the AP Program conducts college comparison studies in several subjects. Table 5.2 summarizes the results of the studies from 1993-2003. The table shows that for most of the studies, the AP students outscored the college students on the comparability study questions.

College Students' Perceptions of the AP Program
The demonstration of empirical validity is typically based on the analysis of quantitative date. However, the AP Program influences the academic aspirations and careers of its participants in ways that are not always quantifiable. The opinions of student participants concerning the AP Program are an important part of its validation, since they describe and evaluate the effects of the Program on peoples' lives.

Casserly (1968a and 1968b)
In 1968, Casserly conducted an interview study of more than 400 college students who has been AP participants. Her subsequent reports (1968a and 1968b) cover a variety of topics under the headings "Preparation in secondary school," "The transition to college," and "The college experience of AP students." They contain a wealth of information, much of it in the words of those interviewed. Her findings, outlined below, have a direct bearing on several aspect of validity. All quoted passages are from Casserly (1968b).

• The correspondence between the content of the secondary school curriculum and that of the corresponding AP Exam has an important effect on the relationship between AP grades and subsequent college achievement. Students generally perceived their secondary school preparation for college work as well reflected in the content of AP Exams. Moreover, they saw this work at the secondary level as appropriate preparation for later college courses.
• "More than 90 percent of the students who prepared for the AP Examinations... ranked them as the most valuable in secondary school." (p.3)
• "Over 90 percent of the students who were placed ahead felt themselves well prepared for the advanced sequence courses in which they then enrolled." (p.11)
• "When one looks at all those students who received some sort of recognition for their AP work, it is clear that, as a group, they are far more satisfied with their intellectual and social experiences in college than are those for whom there were no special provisions."

• Students were, in general, very positive in their comments concerning the value of their AP courses, suggesting that AP classes should be required in secondary school. The study concluded that AP courses have become "the natural outcomes of accelerated programs for the gifted and talented and motivated..." (p.24), and that "unlike the students in the earlier study, few were concerned with social exclusivity or mentioned any negative consequences at all with participation in AP" (p.25).
• The interviews suggested the emergence of a general trend toward taking as many AP Exams as the student felt qualified for, and accepting all the credit and placement offered by the chosen college. As a consequence, students reported looking carefully at the AP policy statements of the colleges they were considering.
• With respect to respondents' college experiences, Casserly reported that, with a few exceptions, most AP students eventually ended up in the right places... and found out that they were better prepared than they had thought (p. 29).

These reported student perceptions were consistent with a corollary finding of the study that, in general, AP students who receive advanced placement in the field of their qualifying AP Exam exhibit higher academic achievement than the other students registered in the same advanced college courses.

Summary
In this section, three interrelated aspects of validity have been reviewed: the relative achievement of AP and non-AP students in college, AP grades as indicators of appropriate placement level, and perceptions of the AP Program by former AP students in college. It is important to remember, however, that all validity studies are constrained by the situation and conditions under which they are performed. You should also remember that this is just a sample of the validity evidence for AP that exists in research literature.

College Achievement: The relative achievement of AP and non-AP students in college.
Studies indicate that AP students tend to demonstrate higher achievement in college than their non-AP counterparts. When placed directly in higher-level courses, they outperform their classmates who took prerequisite courses.

College Placement: AP grades as indicators of appropriate placement level.
Most studies indicate that AP students perform as well as, and often better than, students taking the college-level course for which Advanced Placement or credit is sought. This is an important finding in that the relationship of AP grades to appropriate college placement is a central element of the AP Program; colleges that wish to offer students Advanced Placement opportunities must be assured that these opportunities are appropriate to each student's level of achievement.

Students' Perceptions of AP: Perceptions of the AP Program by former AP students in college.
Long-term studies indicate that students consistently see the AP Program as a very positive and helpful experience to both secondary and college education. Both students and colleges report satisfaction with placement results based on AP Examination grades.