Fieldwork Skills

What Fieldwork Skills covers

Fieldwork Skills is examined in Component 03, Geographical Skills. It covers Framing an enquiry question and choosing your methods, presenting, analysing and explaining fieldwork data and Concluding, and evaluating the enquiry.

The 3 subtopics

Each one has its own page.

• Framing an enquiry question and choosing your methodsQuestions that fieldwork can answer, the six stages of an enquiry, hypotheses, checking a location, primary and secondary data, systematic, random and stratified sampling, and how river discharge and velocity, beach profiles and environmental quality surveys are measured.Open →
• Presenting, analysing and explaining fieldwork dataProcessing raw readings, matching a presentation method to the data, scatter graphs, choropleth maps, proportional symbols and flow lines, land use maps, analysing results, the difference between describing and explaining, treating anomalies, and using a case study to explain results.Open →
• Concluding, and evaluating the enquiryWhat a conclusion must do, evidence against assertion, judging a hypothesis and results that only partly match, transcripts, not over-claiming, using secondary data, evaluating an enquiry, reliability and accuracy, small samples, questionnaire bias, single-day river readings, human error and subjective environmental quality scores.Open →

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Take Fieldwork Skills further

The same content, four other ways.

Commonly confused

Pairs that lose marks when they are blurred together.

• Primary data vs Secondary data

  Primary data: information collected yourself in the field, such as river velocity readings or questionnaire responses. Secondary data: information gathered by somebody else, such as census figures, river gauge records or historic maps.

• Systematic sampling vs Random sampling

  Systematic sampling: taking readings at a regular fixed interval, such as every 100 m along a river. Random sampling: choosing sites or people by chance so personal preference cannot bias the readings.

• Reliable vs Accurate

  Reliable: the same method repeated in the same place giving much the same result. Accurate: a measurement close to the true value of what was measured.

Questions from this topic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What makes a question one that can actually be answered by going out and collecting data?

   Model answer

   It must be about something measurable or observable at a place you can reach safely in the time available, and it must test a geographical idea rather than a matter of taste.

2. 2

   What are the six stages of a geographical enquiry, in order?

   Model answer

   Setting a question or hypothesis, planning and collecting the data, processing and presenting it, analysing and explaining it, reaching a conclusion, and evaluating the whole investigation.

3. 3

   What is a hypothesis in an investigation?

   Model answer

   A statement predicting a pattern or relationship, written so that the data collected can either support it or reject it.

4. 4

   Why does asking whether a place is “nice” have to be rewritten before it can be investigated?

   Model answer

   Because “nice” has no agreed measure, so it must be turned into something scoreable such as litter, noise, upkeep and traffic on a fixed scale.

5. 5

   What should be checked about a location before an investigation is planned there?

   Model answer

   That it is safe and accessible, that permission is held where it is needed, and that it shows enough variation for the question to have an answer.

6. 6

   What is primary data?

   Model answer

   Data that you collect yourself in the field, such as your own river velocity readings, land use records or questionnaire responses.

What is inside Levo

Six ways to work the same material.

Fieldwork Skills revision questions

What does Fieldwork Skills cover in OCR GCSE Geography A?

3 subtopics: framing an enquiry question and choosing your methods, presenting, analysing and explaining fieldwork data and concluding, and evaluating the enquiry. Each one has its own page with questions and model answers.

How is Fieldwork Skills organised?

By the OCR J383 specification, subtopic by subtopic, so it matches the order you are taught it in.