ap capstone research paper rubric

• Link to facebook
• Link to linkedin
• Link to twitter
• Link to youtube
• Writing Tips

A Guide to the Advanced Placement Research Paper Rubric

• 6-minute read
• 18th July 2023

It’s that time of year again! Soon, students will pick up their pencils and books (or more likely, their laptops) and start another academic year. In the US, many high school students will enroll in Advanced Placement (AP) courses . The AP program enables students to take rigorous, college-level courses while still in high school. If you take an AP course, you’ll start earning college credits before you’ve even graduated from high school. One of these courses is the AP Research project .

What Is AP Research?

AP Research follows AP Seminar in the two-year AP Capstone program, which focuses on building skills you can use in any discipline. When doing an AP Research project, you’ll dive deeply into an academic topic, problem, or issue you are personally interested in. During the year-long process, you’ll design, plan, and conduct a research-based investigation. At the end of this process, you’ll write an academic paper of 4,000–5,000 words detailing your research and give an oral presentation summarizing it.

How Is the Research Project Graded?

Both your paper and your presentation count toward your project grade, with 75% of the grade coming from the paper and 25% of the grade coming from the oral presentation. The paper and the oral presentation each have their own grading rubrics.

How Does the Research Paper Rubric Work?

For the paper, you’re given a score of 1–5 (1 being the lowest, 5 being the highest) on 6 different aspects of your paper. The aspects are your topic, your literature review, your method, your results and analysis, your communication, and your citations .

Let’s break each of these components down.

Choosing your topic is the first and arguably most important part of your project. You know what interests you – the hard part is narrowing it down to a single topic. You’ll want to find one specific aspect to pursue – in other words, one specific question to ask – and focus on that throughout the entire project.

Problems occur when your topic is overly broad; either you try to answer too many questions, or the questions you ask can’t be answered within the scope of the required 4,000–5,000 words. Problems can also arise when your research gets off track. Your topic should be the entire focus of your paper from the introduction to the very last line.

Your Literature Review

To plan your research, you need to know what research has already been done. Your topic needs to focus on a gap in that research. In other words, ask a question that nobody else has answered yet. The only way to know what questions have already been asked (and answered) is to collect and review the literature that already exists. You’ll need a wide variety of scholarly sources that explore all aspects of your topic.

To truly study an issue, you need to understand both sides of it, and you’ll need to collect sources that give varying perspectives.

Finally, you’ll need to explain how there’s a gap in these sources (that’s the question that you’re trying to answer) and draw a clear line between the knowledge that already exists and your topic of inquiry.

Your Method

In research, your method consists of the specific tools and procedures you use to collect and analyze data. If you’re doing scientific or primary research, this might be the steps of your experiment. With secondary research, this might be a meta-analysis or content analysis.

Provide clear documentation of your method so that anyone reading your paper will be able to reproduce what you’ve done. You’ll also need to demonstrate how your method was used to collect and analyze data directly relating to your topic of inquiry. If your method is vague, non-replicable, or only questionably related to your topic of inquiry, you’ll have points deducted.

Find this useful?

Subscribe to our newsletter and get writing tips from our editors straight to your inbox.

Your Results and Analysis

Here it is – the whole purpose of your research. This is, in simplest terms, the answer to the question your paper asked.

Make sure that your results present new data – don’t just summarize or repeat existing knowledge. Avoid making your analysis section a repeat of your literature review. You must convey a new understanding or conclusion and ensure you can make a reasoned argument for that understanding based on your data. You should also avoid making grand, overreaching conclusions based on limited data. Your conclusion should flow logically from your literature review through your method and results.

Your Communication

This is where you polish your paper. You don’t want typos, spelling mistakes , grammar errors , and formatting issues to distract your audience from the awesome job you’ve done researching. If you have an amazing project but your paper is not well organized, your audience is going to have a hard time seeing it. Take some time to go through the fine details to make sure all your points are laid out clearly without any errors to sidetrack your audience.

Your Citations

Remember all that literature you reviewed at the beginning of your project? This is where you let your audience know what sources you used. Make sure to cite your sources both in the paper and at the end in a bibliography. You’ll need a citation style guide appropriate to your particular discipline, and you’ll need to follow it. There are a lot of fine details involved in citing sources, so go through your citations with a fine-tooth comb and make sure the formatting is right.

So, who’s grading these papers?

The College Board (the organization that administers the AP program) scores your research paper. Your teacher scores your oral presentation.

Are there examples of previous papers to follow?

Yes. The AP research website offers sample papers in several disciplines. This is particularly helpful since they include the score of each paper and a comment on why that score was given.

A Word of Caution

The AP Research program takes plagiarism very seriously. Students are prohibited from using any AI tools or essay-writing services in any part of their research paper. While AI can be useful for certain academic pursuits, AP Research is not one of them. The AP Research paper is all about your research and what you’ve learned conducting it.

In Conclusion

The AP Research project is a chance to dive into a topic that you’re passionate about. When the proper steps are followed and the rubric is properly applied, that passion will shine through in your paper for everyone to see.

Need some helpful tips for putting your paper together? Check out our Writing Tips and Academic Writing Tips blogs.

Share this article:

Post A New Comment

Got content that needs a quick turnaround? Let us polish your work. Explore our editorial business services.

3-minute read

How to Insert a Text Box in a Google Doc

Google Docs is a powerful collaborative tool, and mastering its features can significantly enhance your...

2-minute read

How to Cite the CDC in APA

If you’re writing about health issues, you might need to reference the Centers for Disease...

5-minute read

Six Product Description Generator Tools for Your Product Copy

Introduction If you’re involved with ecommerce, you’re likely familiar with the often painstaking process of...

What Is a Content Editor?

Are you interested in learning more about the role of a content editor and the...

4-minute read

The Benefits of Using an Online Proofreading Service

Proofreading is important to ensure your writing is clear and concise for your readers. Whether...

6 Online AI Presentation Maker Tools

Creating presentations can be time-consuming and frustrating. Trying to construct a visually appealing and informative...

Make sure your writing is the best it can be with our expert English proofreading and editing.

Class Information

Parent Letter

Course Detailed Syllabus    AP Course Description / Standards

Course and Exam Description.pdf (from CollegeBoard)

AP Research Summer Work

Research Paper Rubric.pdf (2018-present)

Course Proficiencies Rubric Outline.pdf (2017-present)

Presentation and Oral Defense Rubric.pdf (2017-present)

Oral Defense Questions.pdf (UPDATED)

Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com

Cambridge Core: https://www.cambridge.org/core

Oxford Journals: http://www.oxfordjournals.org/en

Springer: http://link.springer.com

ERIC: https://eric.ed.gov/?advanced

Wilson Center: http://wilsoncenter.org

National Center for Biotechnology Information: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

100 Search Engines For Academic Research .pdf

Research Design Textbook.pdf

Research Website Guides

USC Libraries Research Guides: http://libguides.usc.edu

Purdue OWL Research: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/research

Social Science Statistics Home Page: http://www.socscistatistics.com

Citation Style by Discipline

University Library: American University

USC Libraries: Citation Guide

Subject-Specific Resources: Purdue Online Writing Lab

Types of Educational Research: Website

Statistics (Videos)

Annenberg Learner Website: Against All Odds: Inside Statistics

AP Central - AP Research Course Home Page: http://bit.ly/2aPAqsi

TED Talks: https://www.ted.com

Educational TED Talks: http://ed.ted.com

Types of Methods.pdf

http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/stat_t.php

Harry Potter Example Paper.pdf

T-Test Link #1    T-Test Link #2

Class Readings and Handouts

Why so many people sleep in McDonald's in Hong Kong - CNN.pdf

Greenland Has The World's Highest Suicide Rate...: NPR.pdf    weblink: http://n.pr/1TkUCT5

Time trend by region of suicides and suicidal thoughts among Greenland Inuit.pdf

Facing History webpage for Race and Membership Book (scroll to the bottom of the page)

AP Research Topics for 2016.xlsx

Vaccines and Autism Article.pdf

Jenny McCarthy Article    YouTube Video

Do these sources work with PAARC? Which one is best source?

• Why do Koreans prefer apartments over private houses?    PDF Version

• Why dream of a high-rise apartment?    PDF Version

• After Decades of Economic Growth, South Korea is the Land of Apartments    PDF Version

Beginning Your Research.pdf

Understanding the IRB.pdf

Inquiry Proposal Form.docx    Inquiry Proposal Form.pdf

Training Sample Papers

Training Sample 1.pdf

Training Sample 2.pdf

Training Sample 3.pdf

Training Sample 4.pdf

Training Sample 5.pdf

Student Research Paper Samples

Student Sample #1.pdf                         Sample #1 2017.pdf

Student Sample #2.pdf                         Sample #2 2017.pdf

Student Sample #3.pdf                         Sample #3 2017.pdf

Student Sample #4.pdf                         Sample #4 2017.pdf

Student Sample #5.pdf                         Sample #5 2017.pdf

Student Sample #6.pdf                         Sample #6 2017.pdf

Student Sample #7.pdf

Student Sample #8.pdf

HHS Research Paper Samples

NOTE: Your name is never on the paper when it is submitted. On the title page is only your title and word count .

1- High School Foreign Language Education.pdf (survey example)

2- Food Deserts.pdf (content analysis, defining)

3- ADHD and Comorbidity.pdf (content analysis)

4-.Speech,Gender,Politicspdf.pdf (content analysis, and video research)

AP Digital Portfolio Student User Guide for AP Capstone

Find what you need to study

Academic Paper: Literature Review

7 min read • march 13, 2023

Dylan Black

Introduction

Your Literature Review is the first formal part of your paper. It is the section that is the most detached from your actual research project because you most likely will not bring up your actual research question/topic until the end when you situate your gap in the body of knowledge relating to your topic of inquiry.

The point of your literature review is to explain what is already known about your specific topic of inquiry and establish that the gap you have chosen is truly a gap in the body of knowledge. Coming out of your introduction, your reader will be aware of the broader context of your work and the general idea of what it is you'll be talking about. The literature review takes that context and blows it up into what will eventually become approximately the first 1200-1500 words of your paper (though word count varies across discipline and paper format).

How to Write a Lit Review

The goals of your lit review.

The first goal of your literature review is to, as the name implies, conduct an extensive review of the literature through little-r research. This involves more than just listing the sources and their content because you will be explaining connections between them whether they be agreements in data, disagreements in conclusions, etc.

The biggest mistake students make in their Lit Review - and we'll discuss this in more detail in a later section - is that they just list what sources say and do little to analyze what is actually known about a certain subject. This leads to a weak review of the literature and a murky, undeveloped gap. By connecting your sources, you are able to incorporate multiple perspectives, establish credibility, and at the end of the day, simply have a better reading lit review that truly explains the body of knowledge surrounding your topic.

The second goal of your literature review is to establish your gap and explain how:

it hasn't been covered by researchers before (this is justified through the fact that you just explained what is already known!)

why it is relevant to your discipline/topic

This part of your lit review is crucial to your research paper. This part of your paper connects your literature review - all of the known stuff - to what you are doing. This goal basically addresses the question, "ok so we just looked at aaaalllll of these sources, now what are you going to do", answering it with something along the lines of "well, we see that these sources have established [something] about my discipline, but no one has addressed [your gap], so I plan on researching it."

Using phrases like "This paper provides new insight on..." and "However, [researchers, be specific!] have overlooked [your research gap]" can make this especially clear, which is important because your gap is what lays the foundation of everything to come!

Clearing the Gap , Image From GIPHY

Varying Perspectives

An especially important part of your literature review is establishing and explaining, as the CollegeBoard puts it, "relevant scholarly works of varying perspectives". This means that your lit review cannot just be a bunch of summaries of random papers strewn across a page at random, despite the content being somewhat similar.

When writing, and more specifically when planning your lit review, understanding the perspectives of each of your papers, and being able to connect them in a way that they join hands , or naturally lead into one another in a logical chain of succession is invaluable.

To use myself as an example, in my literature review I focused on three sections: "Marxism and Labor", a section about the economic foundations of my topic, "Applications of Marxism to Film", in which I described how the previous section connects to film in a broader sense, and finally "Marxist Film Theory and Moon", which took the previous two sections and explicitly connected them to my film of interest. In building my Lit Review throughout these 3 sections, not only was I able to split up topics in a meaningful way, but each section built on itself, connecting to points made by previously mentioned sources.

Connecting Your Sources To Your Topic of Inquiry

When writing your literature review, every source you mention at some point or another will have to connect to your overall topic of inquiry, otherwise what's the point? Why would they be used? Thus, when you include a source, not only do you want to explain the content and what the source actually says in terms of the literature but you want to be explicit in explaining the relevancy and credibility of the source in connection to the content of your paper.

This will help you better connect your sources to each other. This is important because the quality of your literature review hinges on how it presents the known information to your readers and helps them understand why your project A) is connected to these sources and B) is a new addition to them.

When you're explicitly building on sources to connect them to the topic of your paper, you more effectively accomplish goal A because your reader doesn't have to do much guesswork. Then, when you move onto your gap, the fact that all of your sources are established as relevant will help you effectively justify your gap.

A sample structure of a literature review. Image from the University of Hull

What Not To Do: The Source Spaghetti

We've mentioned this a few times throughout this guide, but it needs repeating. There is one thing, and one thing only, that you should never do in your literature review, and that's something called "the source spaghetti". Basically, this is a method of writing a literature review where instead of planning or connecting sources to each other, you essentially list out your sources with a brief summary, quickly moving from source to source with very little rhyme or reason making your lit review muddled and unfocused, like reading a bowl of spaghetti.

While this certainly gets some information on the page, it is not an effective way of writing a literature review for the simple reason that you won't be able to have the level of detail that a good Lit Review requires.

Image from GIPHY

Rubric Points and Logistics

Now that we've gone over some tips and tricks, let's take a look directly at the rubric and see what the CollegeBoard explicitly states are the expectations for a lit review. For reference, the full rubric can be found here , and is the source for all the following rubric screenshots.

Seen above is the row of the AP Research scoring guidelines that best correspond to your literature review. Let's move from a one to a five and see what differentiates each point.

A literature review that earns a one and a two is marked by a single perspective, that is to say, it does not cover a wide variety of sources and does not effectively describe the body of knowledge surrounding a topic of inquiry. Papers that earn a one for the literature review typically use non-scholarly works as opposed to scholarly works in their research. For example, news sources do not count as scholarly, whereas research papers that have been peer-reviewed (that bit is important) do.

Moving into the three-point category, we see that a paper with this score does have varying perspectives and scholarly works, but lacks in the connections department. A paper with this score may have done some solid little-r research, but did not structure their lit review in such a way that the sources were able to be in discussion with one another. This is why a paper that uses a spaghetti sources way of organization will not be successful. Remember that connections between your sources are just as crucial as the content of the sources themselves.

The four and five categories meld into one. In fact, the text in the rubric is exactly the same. What separates a four and a five is a degree of sophistication in your writing. Where a 4 may hit all the points and do it well, a five does that and goes above and beyond. It's a very fine line and frankly, it's pretty subjective on the part of the reader. The easiest way to figure out what separates these two is to read sample fours and sample fives to see the difference for yourself.

Final Thoughts

Congratulations! If you've made it this far you have all the skills to get started on your literature review. Your next steps from here are to get started on your little-r research, start collecting sources, and get connecting. You got this!

Key Terms to Review ( 3 )

Non-scholarly works

Peer Review

Research papers

Stay Connected

© 2024 Fiveable Inc. All rights reserved.

AP® and SAT® are trademarks registered by the College Board, which is not affiliated with, and does not endorse this website.