Let \(\operatorname {X}=(\operatorname {X},\operatorname {d})\) be an arbitrary metric space. For each \(p \in [1,\infty ],\) we prove that a map \(\gamma :[a,b] \rightarrow \operatorname {X}\) is p-absolutely continuous if and only if, for every Lipschitz function \(h:\operatorname {X} \rightarrow \mathbb {R},\) the post-composition \(h \circ \gamma \) is a p-absolutely continuous function. Furthermore, if \(\operatorname {X}\) is complete and separable, then, for each \(p \in (1,\infty ),\) we show that the equivalence class (up to \(\mathcal {L}^{1}\) -a.e. equality) of a Borel map \(\gamma :[a,b] \rightarrow \operatorname {X}\) belongs to the Sobolev \(W_{p}^{1}([a,b],\operatorname {X})\) -space if and only if, for every Lipschitz function \(h:\operatorname {X} \rightarrow \mathbb {R},\) the equivalence class (up to \(\mathcal {L}^{1}\) -a.e. equality) of the post-composition \(h \circ \gamma \) belongs to the Sobolev \(W_{p}^{1}([a,b],\mathbb {R})\) -space.