Fieldwork enquiry methods: forming aims and hypotheses, choosing locations and sampling, collecting primary and secondary data with physical and human methods, presenting and analysing the data, and evaluating the enquiry.

What this dot point is asking

This covers the fieldwork enquiry process at the heart of Component 3, Applied Fieldwork Enquiry, of Eduqas GCSE Geography A (C111). You must carry out two fieldwork enquiries in contrasting physical and human environments, and the exam assesses them. Eduqas expects you to understand how to form aims and hypotheses, choose locations and sampling, collect primary and secondary data (physical and human methods), present and analyse the data, and evaluate the enquiry.

Forming aims and hypotheses

Every enquiry starts with a clear question.

• An aim states what you want to find out ("to investigate how a river changes downstream").
• A hypothesis is a testable prediction ("the river gets wider and faster downstream"), which the data will support or reject.
• A good aim is focused, measurable and geographical, linked to a process you have studied.

Choosing locations and sampling

You must decide where and how to collect data.

• Choose locations that are safe, accessible and relevant to the question (several sites along a river; contrasting parts of a town).
• Because you cannot measure everything, you take a sample, a representative selection. Eduqas expects three strategies:

Collecting data

Data is either primary or secondary.

• Primary data is what you collect yourself in the field. Physical methods: measuring river width, depth and velocity, pebble size and shape, beach profiles, or an environmental quality survey. Human methods: questionnaires, pedestrian and traffic counts, land-use mapping, and perception surveys.
• Secondary data comes from other sources: census data, OS maps, weather records, photographs and official statistics.

Using both primary and secondary data makes an enquiry stronger.

Presenting and analysing data

Once collected, data must be presented and analysed.

• Presentation: choose suitable graphs, maps, annotated photographs and diagrams (a line graph for river velocity downstream, a located bar chart on a map, an annotated field sketch).
• Analysis: describe the patterns and trends, quote figures, identify anomalies, and use statistics (mean, median, range, interquartile range) to summarise.
• Then draw a conclusion that answers the aim and refers back to the hypothesis.

Evaluating the enquiry

Finally, you evaluate how good the enquiry was, which is where high marks lie.

• Were the methods accurate and the sample large and representative enough?
• Did the weather, time of day or human error affect the data?
• How reliable is the conclusion, and what are its limitations?
• How could the enquiry be improved (a bigger sample, more sites, repeating on different days)?

Try this

Q1. Explain the difference between primary and secondary data. [2 marks]

• Cue. Primary data is collected by you in the field (river measurements, questionnaires); secondary data comes from other sources (census, maps, records).

Q2. Explain why systematic sampling might be chosen for a river study. [4 marks]

• Cue. Sampling at regular intervals (every 1 km) gives even, unbiased coverage along the whole river, so the change downstream can be tracked fairly.