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Fieldwork Skills

Framing an enquiry question and choosing your methods

  • 3 things to know
  • Component 03

Overview

Questions 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.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Your recallNot started
Key term

Explain the hypothesis, the primary data and the random sampling used when planning a fieldwork enquiry.

Process

How does an environmental quality survey work?

Key term

What is a hypothesis in an investigation?

Questions from this subtopic

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.

Other ways to work this

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Ecosystems of the Planet
Environmental Threats to Our Planet
Fieldwork Skills
Geographical Skills

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Sort every topic into what you know and what you do not, then drill only the weak ones.

The trade winds drive warm surface water .
westwardseastwardsnorthwards

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Rapid timed gap-fills on the terms and numbers you need to recall without thinking.

AMore sunspots mean the Sun is giving out more energy.
BMore reaches the Earth and the climate warms.
CFewer sunspots mean a cooler climate.

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Assemble a full-mark answer from its marking points, in the order an examiner wants them.

Obliquity means the angle of tilt of the Earth's axis.
TrueFalse

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Spot the fault in a statement. The traps are the mistakes students actually make.

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Short focus games to reset attention, so the next set lands better than the last.

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