Look for already published DBQs that meet your needs. The College Board, the company that creates the Advanced Placement exams, provides sample DBQs on their AP website for teachers. As a registered teacher of an AP course, you can also order full practice exams, unavailable to students, from the College Board. The samples are in the same format as the AP exam and of the same level of difficulty. "You don't need to reinvent the wheel," Schwartzberg said.
Choose a theme. If you must write your own DBQ, choose a topic you have covered in class so that the students will be able to succeed in the exercise. Schwartzberg says that the "big" topics and periods you should emphasize -- and which also make for meaningful DBQs -- are Thomas Jefferson's presidency, Andrew Jackson's presidency, the Civil War, early-20th-century immigration, the New Deal, the Cold War and civil rights.
List the points you want students to cover in their essay. Remember that the DBQ always asks students to take a stance, and gives them primary sources that can help them formulate a nuanced response with multiple perspectives. So, for example, if your DBQ will be about Thomas Jefferson's leadership style, you'll want them to discuss how his actions could be interpreted both as hypocritical and as flexible. If your students have been studying World War II, an essay about Hitler should address not only the terrible things Hitler did, but also how his actions were positive for Germany's economy. Remember also that DBQs ask students to focus on a specific period of American history, so a DBQ about immigration between 1880 and 1925 would not include documents about the late-20th-century immigration debate.
Find at least eight primary sources that include or allude to the points you want students to address. Using library and online research, look for essays, speeches, political cartoons, diary entries and newspaper articles from the period addressed in your DBQ. If a source is long, find an excerpt of one to three paragraphs that will serve your needs.
Compile the primary sources into one file, giving each document its own letter designation. For each one, denote the author of the document, its genre (for example, whether it is a speech or part of a diary entry) and the date it was written or produced.
Write the essay prompt. The prompt should ask students to take a stance on an issue, for example whether Richard Nixon was an effective president. Specify the time period that students should address in their essays; for example, in the case of Nixon, the period between 1969-1980, so that students understand they should not include any cultural influences that Nixon may have had past 1980. The question should be narrow enough that students will include the points you seek, but broad enough that in order to succeed they must combine the information in the sources with knowledge they have learned in your course.