The energies of the field-aligned proton beams observed upstream of the earth's bow shock are tested, on a statistical basis, against a simple reflection model. The comparison is carried out using both plasma and magnetic field data collected by the ISEE 2 spacecraft. The observations refer to the period from November 5 to December 20, 1977. According to this model, some of the solar wind protons incident upon the earth's shock front when reflected upstream gain energy by displacement parallel to the interplanetary electric field. The energy gained in the reflection can be described as a function of the angles between the interplanetary magnetic field, the solar wind bulk velocity, and the local shock normal. The task of finding these angles, i.e., the expected source point of the reflected ions at the earth's shock front, has been resolved using both the measured magnetic field direction and actual beam trajectory. The latter method, which takes into account the ion drift velocity, leads to a better agreement between theory and observations when far from the shock. In particular, it allows us to check the energies of the field-aligned beams even when they are observed far from the earth's bow shock (at distances up to 10-15 RE). We confirm, on a statistical basis, the test of the model recently carried out using the Los Alamos National Laboratory/Max-Planck-extraterrestrische observations on ISEE 1 and 2. We infer that reflected beams can sometimes propagate far upstream of the earth's bow shock without changing their energy properties.