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Quiz yourself on Fieldwork Process and EnquiryGet your flashcardsBuild my revision planTrack my progress💡 Exam Tips for the Fieldwork Process
🎯 Common Question Types:
- "State and justify a sampling strategy" — always name the strategy AND explain why it suits the investigation (2–4 marks)
- "Suggest how to improve the reliability / validity / representativeness" — name the specific change and link it to the quality dimension (2–3 marks)
- "Assess the effectiveness of the investigation" — the big evaluation question; use PREACH, cite data, address all three dimensions (6–8 marks)
- "Complete or suggest a risk assessment" — name hazard, who is at risk, and control measures (3 marks)
- "Justify the choice of graph type" — link the graph to the data type and explain what it reveals that another type would not (2 marks)
📝 Key Command Words:
- State: Name it — no explanation needed
- Describe: What the pattern is — use data values
- Explain: Why the pattern exists — refer to geographical process or theory
- Justify: Give reasons for a choice made — link the decision back to the enquiry aim
- Suggest: Offer a plausible idea — you do not need to prove it, but it must be geographically sensible
- Assess: Weigh up the evidence — strengths AND weaknesses, then make an overall judgment
- Evaluate: As "assess" but stronger — explicit weighing and a clear conclusion about the overall quality
⚠️ Common Mistakes to Avoid:
- Telling the story of the fieldwork day rather than evaluating method quality — examiners want analysis, not narrative
- Offering vague improvements ("we could collect more data") — always specify how much more, using what method, and why this addresses the specific weakness
- Forgetting to link sampling strategy to the investigation aim — "we used systematic sampling" alone earns 1 mark; "we used systematic sampling because our hypothesis predicted a gradient along the transect, and regular intervals would detect that change" earns 3 marks
- Ignoring anomalies — examiners reward students who spot an anomalous value and explain it geographically
- Using "reliable" and "valid" interchangeably — they mean different things and examiners will notice if you confuse them
- Not referring to specific data in evaluation answers — an 8-mark evaluation that never cites a single number or result is stuck at Level 1
Quick Check: What is the difference between reliability and validity in fieldwork?
Reliability refers to whether the investigation would produce the same results if repeated — it is about consistency. An investigation is unreliable if measurements vary due to random error, inconsistent technique, or changing conditions. Validity refers to whether the data actually measures what the enquiry question requires — it is about measuring the right thing. Data can be reliable without being valid: for example, a float method consistently overestimates mean channel velocity because it measures surface flow only — the results are consistent (reliable) but they do not accurately represent mean velocity (less valid). The best investigations are both reliable AND valid.
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