Exam Connection — How Justification Questions Are Marked

🎯 Exam Connection — How Justification Questions Are Marked

Frequency: Presentation and justification questions appear in every fieldwork exam — this is one of the most consistently tested skills across both AQA and OCR B specifications.

Typical question stems:

• "Justify your choice of presentation technique for your primary data." (4–6 marks)
• "Describe the pattern shown in Figure X and explain what it suggests about the geographical process being investigated." (4–6 marks)
• "Evaluate how effectively your chosen presentation technique communicated your fieldwork results." (6–8 marks)
• "Suggest one way the presentation could be improved." (2 marks)
• "Compare the suitability of a bar chart and a scatter graph for displaying the data collected." (4 marks)

The Level 1 → Level 2 → Level 3 progression for a "Justify your choice" question (6 marks):

Level	What It Looks Like	Marks Available
Level 1	"I used a bar chart because it was easy to draw and I could see which site had the most traffic." No justification of data type suitability; no link to the enquiry question.	1–2 marks
Level 2	"I used a scatter graph because I was testing the relationship between two variables — distance from the cliff (independent) and pebble size (dependent). A scatter graph shows each pair of measurements as a point, making any correlation immediately visible, and allows a line of best fit to be added. This was more appropriate than a bar chart, which would have required grouping the data into distance categories and calculated means, losing information about individual data points."	3–4 marks
Level 3	"I used a scatter graph to test the hypothesis that pebble size decreases with distance from the cliff due to attrition during transport. A scatter graph was most appropriate because both variables are continuous measurements (distance in metres; pebble b-axis diameter in mm), and the individual data points are preserved — unlike a bar chart average, which would lose information about the distribution and make it impossible to identify outliers. The scatter graph also allowed me to calculate Spearman's rank correlation coefficient (rs = −0.87), providing a statistical test of correlation strength; comparing this value against the critical value at the 0.05 significance level confirmed the correlation was statistically significant. A limitation is that a scatter graph cannot prove causation — the correlation might reflect a confounding variable such as differential wave energy at different distances from the cliff rather than progressive attrition."	5–6 marks

What the examiner is looking for at Level 3: specific reference to data type (continuous/discrete/locational), explanation of why the chosen technique is better than an alternative, use of specific values or statistical test results where possible, and acknowledgement of a genuine limitation.