Different Versions of Exams

For some subjects, more than one version of the exam is administered on the regularly scheduled testing date to reduce the risk of exam content being shared between students.

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AP designs different exam versions to be of similar difficulty and equivalent in the content and skills they cover. However, some exam versions may be slightly more difficult than others. Despite these minor variations in difficulty, student scores will not be affected. After the exam, differences in difficulty are identified through psychometric equating processes that assign higher and lower “cut scores” required for AP scores of 2, 3, 4, and 5 to reflect the relative difficulty of each version of the exam. This ensures that overall AP scores represent the same levels of achievement, regardless of which version of the exam a student takes.

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 AP uses two different types of equating processes:

• Common-item equating: A set of common exam questions is used across different versions of the exam administered to different student populations.
• Random groups equating: Different versions of the exam are administered to groups of examinees that are statistically equivalent but randomly assigned.

In both equating designs, the statistical procedures adjust for differences in difficulty among exam versions that are built to be similar in difficulty and content. This allows AP to establish “cut scores” for multiple versions of the exam that result in comparable AP Exam scores of 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1. While the cut scores may differ by a few points depending on the difficulty of the exam versions, the exam scores will represent the same performance standards (and hence, a student’s score will represent the same level of achievement) no matter which version of an exam a student takes.

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When necessary, we administer alternate exam versions to small groups of students in the United States on the regularly scheduled testing date. This is to ensure that scores for different exam versions (worldwide) can be compared in a statistically valid way. However, this does also mean that some or all students in one school may take a different version of the exam than the most commonly administered version(s).

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If more than one version of the exam was administered to your students on the regularly scheduled exam date, you will have an IPR for each version of the exam.

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No. Schools do not need to (and should not) take any action to determine whether they've received multiple versions of an AP Exam.

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