Fieldwork and skills, Year 11: issue evaluation, planning an enquiry and collecting data

12

HintIt is about the length of one school term.

The whyThe pre-release booklet holds maps, graphs, photographs, data and the views of different groups about one real issue. Schools work through it in the weeks before Paper 3 (Geographical applications). You cannot take your own copy into the exam: you are handed a clean one. The questions themselves stay unseen.

A stakeholder

HintThink of someone who has something to win or lose.

The whyAn issue such as a new road or a flood scheme affects residents, businesses, the council and environmental groups in different ways, so they hold different views. The booklet often quotes them. A strong answer shows who gains, who loses, and why their views conflict.

Why they are weaker

HintA good decision shows that the alternatives were weighed, not ignored.

The whyThere is no single right option: marks are for the quality of the case. Use evidence from the booklet and your own knowledge to show the benefits of your choice for people and the environment, admit its drawbacks, and show that the alternatives have bigger costs or smaller benefits.

How the risk will be reduced

HintListing a danger is pointless unless you then act on it.

The whyFor example: hazard, slipping on wet rocks; likelihood, medium; action, wear boots with good grip and keep away from the steepest bank. These actions are often called control measures. AQA expects you to know the risks of both your physical and your human enquiry and how each was cut.

hazard; risk

HintDeep water is one of these; the chance of someone falling in is the other.

The whyThe two words are not the same. A fast road beside a survey site is always dangerous in itself, but the chance of harm is low if pupils stand well back behind a barrier. Fieldwork planning cannot always remove the danger; where it cannot, it lowers the chance and the seriousness of harm.

They cover only one short stretch, so change along the river cannot be seen

HintCompare where the question looks and where the tape measures would be.

The whyThe places where data is collected must match the question. To show change downstream, sites need to be spread from the upper course to the lower course. Access and safety limit the choice too, and a plan should say so. Ten sites bunched together would only show what one part of the river is like.

It is far too large to collect data for in one day

HintThink about how many places a class could reach before the coach leaves.

The whyA suitable question is narrow enough to answer with data you can collect yourself, safely, in the time and with the equipment you have. It should also be clearly geographical and linked to something you have studied. "Does this river get wider downstream?" can be tested in a day; a question about every river over decades cannot.

So the results can be compared with what the theory predicts

HintA forecast is only useful if you later check it.

The whyThe theory or model gives the enquiry its expected pattern, and so its hypothesis. It also shows which data is worth collecting. Afterwards you can say whether the place fits the model, and explain why it does or does not. AQA asks you to know the theory or concept behind each of your two enquiries.

systematic

HintThe points are fixed by a regular rule, not by chance.

The whyRegular intervals are quick to set out and make sure the whole line is covered. The interval can be in distance (every 10 m), in time (every half hour) or in order (every tenth person). The weakness is that not every point has an equal chance of being picked, and a regular gap may happen to match, or miss, a pattern in the place.

30

HintEach area gets its fair share of the total.

The why60% of 50 = 0.6 × 50 = 30, leaving 20 for the south. Stratified sampling splits the population into groups of known size and samples each group in proportion. Within each group the people can still be picked at random or at regular intervals. It only works if the sizes of the groups are known.

It avoids bias

HintPeople tend to choose the easy, dry or interesting places.

The whyIn random sampling every point or person has an equal chance of being chosen, so the collector's preferences cannot shape the results. The Royal Geographical Society calls it the least biased method. Its weakness is that chance may leave parts of the study area unsampled, especially with a small sample.

Primary data

HintThe word also describes the first stage of schooling.

The whyMeasurements, counts, questionnaires, photographs and field sketches made by you are all of this kind. Data that someone else collected and published, such as census figures, an old map or a flood record, is secondary. AQA requires both of your enquiries to use data of the first-hand kind.

qualitative

HintIt records what a place is like, not how much or how many.

The whyCounts and measurements are quantitative: they can be graphed and averaged. Descriptions, opinions and images capture things numbers miss, such as how a place feels. They are harder to compare, so geographers often turn them into numbers, for example by scoring a street from 1 to 5.