Causation in the AP Histories

📘College Board Description

Causation is an important historical reasoning approach in AP World History: Modern. In the current College Board framework, students practice causation through the skills of making connections and argumentation—for example, by explaining how one development led to another, analyzing causes and effects, and supporting a historical claim with evidence and reasoning. Understanding causation matters because many AP World History questions ask students to explain how and why historical developments happened and what effects they produced.

In the current AP World History: Modern skills framework, causation is not a separate numbered skill category. Instead, it is a historical reasoning process students use when making connections between developments and when constructing arguments. In practice, students may be asked to identify patterns and connections, explain how one development led to another, and make and support historically defensible claims about causes and effects with specific evidence and reasoning.

The purpose of this study guide is to examine several important ways students use causation in a bit more detail. So, let’s get to it!

Causation and the Current AP Skill Framework

On the current AP World History: Modern exam, causation most clearly connects to Skill 5 (Making Connections) and Skill 6 (Argumentation), but it also depends on Skill 4 (Contextualization). Skill 5 asks students to identify patterns or connections among developments and explain how one development relates to another. Skill 6 asks students to make a historically defensible claim, support it with specific evidence, use historical reasoning such as causation to explain relationships among evidence, and, at the highest level, qualify or modify an argument with nuance and complexity. Skill 4 matters because students often need to place causes and effects within broader historical contexts in order to explain why developments happened and why they mattered.

How Causation Appears on the AP Exam

On the AP World History: Modern exam, causation may appear in any section: multiple-choice (55 questions in 55 minutes), short-answer (3 questions in 40 minutes), the document-based question (1 DBQ in 60 minutes, including a 15-minute reading period), and the long essay question (1 LEQ in 40 minutes, chosen from 3 options). In Section I, Part B, students complete 3 short-answer questions in 40 minutes: Question 1 is required and uses a secondary source, Question 2 is required and uses a primary source, and students then choose either Question 3 or Question 4. Question 3 focuses on historical developments or processes from 1200–1750, and Question 4 focuses on developments or processes from 1750–2001. In Section II, students choose 1 of 3 LEQ options. Students must select one of the three long essay questions. Each question focuses on the same reasoning process, but on historical developments and processes in different time periods. Students should still read the prompt carefully to determine exactly what the question is asking them to argue. Because of that, students should be prepared to use causation across question types rather than assume it will only appear on an LEQ.

In multiple-choice questions, causation often appears through stimulus analysis. Students may need to identify what development most directly caused a change described in a source, or what effect most likely followed from a process shown in a map, chart, image, or text. In short-answer questions, students may be asked to explain causes or effects directly, sometimes using a primary or secondary source and sometimes without a stimulus. Students should be prepared to explain causation briefly but specifically across all course periods represented on the exam.

Students may be asked to identify causes or effects, explain how one development led to another, or discuss which causes or effects were more important in a historical argument. On essay questions, students must do more than list causes: they need a defensible thesis, specific evidence, and clear reasoning that explains how the evidence supports the causal argument.

A causation prompt can appear on an LEQ, because LEQs are explicitly built around a reasoning process such as causation, comparison, or continuity and change over time. A DBQ may also ask students to make a causal argument, but DBQs are not tied to a single reasoning process every year; students must read the prompt carefully and determine whether it is asking them to explain causes, effects, comparison, or continuity and change over time.

Using Causation on FRQs

When causation appears on a DBQ or LEQ, students must do more than identify causes or effects. They need to make a historically defensible thesis, explain broader historical context, and build an argument using evidence and causal reasoning. On the DBQ, students must use at least four documents to support the argument, include at least one additional piece of specific historical evidence beyond the documents, and explain for at least two documents how the point of view, purpose, historical situation, and/or audience is relevant to the argument. On the LEQ, students must support the argument with at least two specific pieces of relevant evidence and use causation to organize the essay.

Ways to Use Causation on AP World History Questions

🔗Causes and Effects of a specific historical development or process

In terms of causation reasoning, this is what we might call the “base level” skill. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it is easy, but that this is the first level of understanding causation.

When you are asked to find the causes and effects of a specific historical event or process, what you want to do is identify SPECIFIC causes and/or effects of said event or process. No generalizations here!

For example, if you are asked to find a cause of World War I, you couldn’t just say relationships between countries - that is too vague. In all honesty, anybody could say this about any war, and it would be true. This doesn’t show that you know the specific causes of World War I.

So, instead, say a cause would be the alliance system in early 20th-century Europe. Those alliances were not unique in world history, but in the context of 1914 they helped transform the conflict between Austria-Hungary and Serbia into a much larger war involving many European powers.

💭Practice: See if you can find the causes and/or effects of ONE of the following events or processes

• The rise of Islam (process)
• The Opium Wars (event)
• The Russian Revolution (event)

❗TIP: To help you identify causes and effects, it’s really beneficial to use some type of graphic organizer that will help you organize your information. The easiest one to use, and one of the most effective, for causation is a simple C/E chart

On the AP exam, identifying causes and effects is only the starting point. Strong responses must connect those causes and effects to an argument. For example, instead of only listing militarism, alliances, and imperialism as causes of World War I, a stronger response would argue which cause was most important and explain how that cause contributed to the outbreak of war using specific historical evidence.

🤞The Relationship between Causes and Effects of a specific Historical Event or Process

When looking at the relationship between causes and effects of a specific historical event or process, you want to go beyond simply identifying a cause and/or effect. You want to be able to EXPLAIN the “why” behind the cause or effect.

Simply put, it’s the next step in the causation process. First you have to identify the cause and/or effect, and now you need to explain WHY something is a cause of the event/process, and/or WHY the given effect happened.

🎥Watch: WHAP - Introduction to Historical Reasoning

💭PRACTICE: Breaking curfew😳😨😱

So, it’s 11:30 on a Thursday night, and your curfew was at 11:00. You knew you had to be home at 11:00, but you were hanging out at the coffee shop with your friends, and simply lost track of time. When you walked in the door to your dwelling at 11:30, your parents were standing right there, and within 2 minutes they had taken your cell phone and grounded you for a week.

In this case, breaking curfew was the event. The cause - losing track of time. The effects - losing your phone and being grounded for a week

Now that we have identified the cause and effects, we have to explain the “WHY” or the “HOW”

See how the causes and effects are related? And that you’ve done more than just identify the cause and effects - you’ve EXPLAINED the why behind both.

🧠Understanding the difference between primary and secondary causes and between short-term and long-term effects

Ooooh, now we are getting into the nitty-gritty of causation. So far, we have learned how to:

• Identify a specific cause or effect
• Explain why something was a cause or effect

Now, we need to dig a little deeper. These are useful analytical tools for building stronger causal arguments, but they are not official College Board categories. On the exam, students often strengthen a response by distinguishing between more significant and less significant causes and between immediate and long-term effects.

Most significant cause (analytical label)

One of the most important causes of an event or process

🎥Watch: Review how to rank causes and distinguish immediate triggers from long-term causes in AP World History causal arguments.

Additional contributing cause (analytical label)

A cause that helped produce an event or process, even if it was not the only or most important one

Short-term effect

An effect that happens a short-time after the event/process

Long-term effect

An effect that happens a significant amount of time after the process/event

💭Practice: Let’s take a look at World War I and see if we can identify major and contributing causes, and short-term vs. long-term effects

World War I

In the case of World War I, historians usually distinguish between long-term causes and the immediate trigger. Long-term causes included militarism, alliances, imperial competition, and nationalism. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 was the immediate trigger that set these larger tensions into motion. On an AP response, students should avoid treating the assassination as the only or automatically the most important cause; instead, they should explain which causes mattered most and why.

Does this make sense? Want to take a shot at applying this skill? (Get it? Shot? Like the archduke got shot? 😂)

The Historical Significance of Different Causes and/or Effects

Students may strengthen a causal argument by evaluating the relative importance of different causes or effects. However, historical significance is not one of the three reasoning processes used to structure AP World History LEQs; instead, use discussion of significance to support a causation argument when relevant.

On AP World History: Modern, students may be asked to explain the relative importance of different causes, effects, or developments. This kind of evaluation can strengthen a causal argument, but the main historical reasoning processes used to structure LEQs are causation, comparison, and continuity and change over time.

For you, this means you will have to be able to explain, usually through discussions or essays, why the causes, or effects, of a specific historical event or process matter. Why are they important to know? How will they impact future history?

Let’s take a look at the long-term effect from our example on World War I. One long-term effect of World War I was the rise of Hitler and the Nazis in Germany. So, I ask you: why is this important to know? Why was it significant in history? Why should we care?

Well, let’s answer that, in a variety of ways. That is what’s so cool about historical significance - there usually isn’t just ONE simple answer.

• The rise of Hitler and the Nazis led to the Holocaust - a genocide that killed millions of people. In response to the atrocities of World War II, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which established an influential global standard for human rights. That is historically significant.
• The rise of Hitler and the Nazis led to the destruction of a large part of Europe and Asia, leaving two main superpowers standing after the war: the United States and the Soviet Union. Due to differing viewpoints on government and economic decisions, a 45 year Cold War impacted nearly every nation of the world between 1945-1990. That’s significant.

💭PRACTICE: Explain the long-term historical significance of the Korean War, 1950-1953

So that’s it for causation in AP World History. Hopefully you have found this guide informative and it hasn’t “caused” you any anxiety (do you find that punny?!). Thank you for taking the time to read this, and good luck on the exam!