grouping

A GUIDE TO WRITING A DBQ – Part II – Grouping

Introduction to Grouping

One of the scoring requirements when writing the DBQ on the AP exam is to demonstrate that you understand the relationships between the documents you have read. This process of showing how documents are related to each other is called grouping. The ultimate purpose of grouping is to better arrive at a thesis that answers the DBQ question and insightfully includes information from all of the documents.

On the AP exam, up to 3 out of the 9 scoring points can be earned through your skillful use of grouping, as demonstrated in the following 2 rubrics from the scoring guide:

• Analyzes documents by grouping them in two or three ways, depending on the question. (1 point)

• Analyzes the documents in additional ways— groupings, comparisons, and syntheses. (1-2 points)

How to Group Effectively (i.e., in order to get the most points)

On a basic level one can separate documents into groupings by the author’s gender, country of origin, social status, viewpoint, etc., as long as one makes clear to the reader how the grouping was formed (in other words, how the documents relate to each other and the question).

The number of groupings required for a DBQ depends on the documents each year. Grouping is another way to show analysis and understanding of the documents, so one should try to create at least 3 groupings with at least two subgroups in each (though some groups might have only one document). The difference between a grouping and a subgroup is that a grouping embraces or is explained by the subgroups. In other words, if one of my groupings in an essay about Roman and Han technology (from the 2007 APWH exam) is “the positive uses of technology”, then my subgroups might be Roman examples and Han examples. If my grouping is “Roman views of technology”, then my subgroups might be positive views, neutral views and negative views.

Beyond this, one must show how the grouping of the documents is a RESPONSE to the PROMPT or question asked. In some cases the grouping of documents based upon similarities might not be counted when that similarity is not relevant to the task students are given in the prompt. Following are examples of when this was the case from past AP exams.

• In the 2006 AP European DBQ, the prompt asked students to discuss the different views Europeans had toward the purpose of sports. Some students grouped documents based upon the authors’ countries of origin, but did not demonstrate that differing country origins generated differing views toward sports. They could not demonstrate this primarily because the views in the documents did not tend to differ by region. In fact, people all over Europe had nationalistic views; Europeans of various nationalities agreed that sports had applications relevant to war, were healthy, etc. Therefore, this grouping of documents did not help in answering the question.
• Likewise in the 2007 APWH DBQ, the prompt did not ask students to make a comparison. Also, the documents had already been separated into Roman and Han groups. Therefore those students that grouped documents into Roman and Han groupings did not get any points. (However Roman and Han did make decent subgroups when addressing attitudes towards technology as mentioned above.)

In summary, do not categorize documents SIMPLY FOR THE SAKE OF CATEGORIZING. The spirit of the grouping standard is that one analyzes documents IN RESPONSE TO THE PROMPT by grouping in ways relevant to the prompt.

Remember that from the writer’s point of view, the purpose of grouping is to put documents/ideas together that support the arguments that you are using to explain your thesis. Groupings will help you to construct a thesis statement that can be supported by the evidence that you have been given.

Part II - Grouping documents and organizing your essay

• Determine what groupings would be helpful in answering the question (this should be based both on a reading of the question as well as a reading of the documents).
• Then put documents into those groupings. Documents might go into more than one grouping.
• Determine which subgroups would be appropriate for each grouping.
• Put the documents into as many subgroups as are fitting. Again, documents could end up going into more than one subgroup.
• Make sure that all documents have been placed into a grouping if possible.
• Rephrase your answer to the question (from Step 1) to reflect all the groupings as appropriate.
• Make sure that your answer is based on all of the documents and all of the groupings (the subgroups will not necessarily be part of the answer at this point).