Fieldwork and the geographical enquiry
Geography · GCSE · The School
The enquiry sequence
Question → hypothesis → method → data collection → presentation → analysis → conclusion → evaluation. The exam examines your OWN fieldwork, so know your site, your date, and why you chose both. 'We measured river velocity at three sites on the River X in June' beats any general description.
Sampling
RANDOM removes bias but can miss a feature. SYSTEMATIC (every tenth house, every 50 metres) gives even coverage and can align with a hidden pattern. STRATIFIED samples each group in proportion, which matters when the population is mixed. Whichever you used, the mark is for saying WHY it suited your question.
Evaluating honestly
Name the real limitations: a single day's weather, a small sample, an instrument's precision, questionnaire responses skewed by who was willing to stop. Then say what you would change. Examiners reward a candidate who can see the weaknesses in their own data far more than one who claims none.
RANDOM: number every shop and pick 20 with a random number generator — unbiased, but may miss a whole type. SYSTEMATIC: every fifth shop along the street — even coverage, but could align with a repeating pattern. STRATIFIED: split into independents and chains, then sample each in proportion — best when you already know the groups matter. Naming the method AND why you chose it is what earns the marks.
Writing a question you can actually answer
The enquiry stands or falls on its title, and a title that is too broad guarantees a weak conclusion. 'Is the river changing?' cannot be answered with a day's data. 'Does the Bradshaw model hold for the width and velocity of this river between site one and site five?' names the variables, the places and the theory you are testing, so every later decision follows from it. Include a location and something measurable in the title itself, and check that you could answer it with the equipment, the access and the time you genuinely have.
Primary, secondary, and knowing which you have
PRIMARY data is what you collected yourself: your pebble measurements, your questionnaire responses, your environmental quality survey. SECONDARY data comes from someone else: census figures, flood records, historic maps, an index of deprivation. A strong enquiry uses both and says which is which, because they carry different weaknesses. Your primary data covers one day and one place; the secondary data covers years and a wider area but was collected for someone else's purpose. The evaluation is much stronger when it names the specific limitation of each rather than saying more data would have helped.