Geographical Investigations - Fieldwork | Edexcel GCSE Geography A (1GA0)
Geographical Investigations - Fieldwork
- 139 questions
- 9 subtopics
- Paper 3
- Paper 3
Geographical Investigations – Fieldwork is examined in Paper 3, Geographical Investigations: Fieldwork and UK Challenges.
It covers river fieldwork: enquiry questions, methods and secondary data, coastal fieldwork: enquiry questions, methods and secondary data, urban fieldwork: enquiry questions and methods, urban fieldwork: secondary data sources, rural fieldwork: enquiry questions and methods, rural fieldwork: secondary data sources, the enquiry process: asking questions and choosing methods, the enquiry process: presenting, analysing and concluding and the enquiry process: evaluating fieldwork.
Sample questions from Geographical Investigations - Fieldwork
Answer each one closed book first, then open the answer.
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River fieldwork: enquiry questions, methods and secondary data
Why does a float on the surface give a faster reading than the channel as a whole?
Show the answer
Friction against the bed and banks slows the water lower down, so the surface moves faster than the average. -
Coastal fieldwork: enquiry questions, methods and secondary data
How is the shape of beach sediment recorded?
Show the answer
Each pebble is compared with a roundness chart running from very angular to well rounded. -
Urban fieldwork: enquiry questions and methods
Give four categories you would use in a land use survey.
Show the answer
Retail, residential, offices or services, and industry, with open space and vacant units also recorded. -
Urban fieldwork: secondary data sources
Why is census data considered reliable?
Show the answer
Households are required by law to complete it, so coverage is almost complete and the same questions are asked everywhere. -
Rural fieldwork: enquiry questions and methods
How can answers to an open question be made countable?
Show the answer
Group similar replies into a small number of categories and tally how often each one occurs. -
Rural fieldwork: secondary data sources
How would an ageing rural population appear in the figures?
Show the answer
A rising share of residents over 65 alongside a falling share of young adults and children. -
The enquiry process: asking questions and choosing methods
Why is the question decided before the methods are chosen?
Show the answer
The question decides what has to be measured, so choosing methods first risks collecting data that answers nothing. -
The enquiry process: presenting, analysing and concluding
Which graph is used to show the relationship between two sets of measurements?
Show the answer
A scatter graph, with one variable on each axis and a point for every site.
The 9 subtopics
One subtopic is one session. Work down the list.
| Subtopic | What it covers | Questions |
|---|---|---|
| River fieldwork: enquiry questions, methods and secondary data | Discharge and how it is calculated from cross-sectional area and velocity, measuring width, depth and velocity with floats and flow meters, quantitative and qualitative methods, change downstream, drainage basins, and flood risk maps and other published data for river fieldwork. | 20 |
| Coastal fieldwork: enquiry questions, methods and secondary data | Beach morphology, measuring a beach profile, breaks of slope and gradient with a clinometer, sediment size and roundness, unbiased sampling with quadrats, field sketches, wave counts and wave type, profiles either side of a groyne, and using geology maps, old maps and records in coastal fieldwork. | 20 |
| Urban fieldwork: enquiry questions and methods | Environmental quality surveys and bipolar scales, reducing bias, land use surveys and base maps, urban transects, vacancy rates, pedestrian and traffic counts, questionnaires with open and closed questions, and how relief, rivers, waterfronts and parks shape inner urban areas. | 20 |
| Urban fieldwork: secondary data sources | What census data reveals about an urban area, how often it is collected, the most useful figures, why it is reliable and its main drawback, small-area statistics, showing change over time, and using other published sources alongside your own data. | 10 |
| Rural fieldwork: enquiry questions and methods | Rural settlements, questionnaires, interviews, fair sampling and rating scales, asking the public ethically, pedestrian flow and traffic counts, commuter villages, services surveys, honeypot sites and footpath erosion, and sampling and recording housing in a village. | 20 |
| Rural fieldwork: secondary data sources | Neighbourhood summary reports, census evidence of population growth, counterurbanisation and ageing, car ownership and housing tenure, why the census alone is not enough, timetables and historic maps, and the risk of relying on published data alone. | 10 |
| The enquiry process: asking questions and choosing methods | Good fieldwork questions and hypotheses, the six stages of an enquiry, choosing the question before the methods, hazards and controls for river and urban fieldwork, pilot surveys, random, systematic and stratified sampling, and observation as a technique. | 14 |
| The enquiry process: presenting, analysing and concluding | Using GIS, choropleth and proportional symbol maps, located bar charts and scatter graphs, positive and negative correlation and why correlation is not cause, anomalies, using theory in analysis, the median and interquartile range, evidenced conclusions and percentage change. | 15 |
| The enquiry process: evaluating fieldwork | Evaluating fieldwork, reliable and accurate data and how to improve them, the weaknesses of questionnaires and environmental quality scores, data from a single day, human error in river measurements, making conclusions more secure and saying what you would change. | 10 |
How the guide is worked
Answering a question from memory stores it far better than reading the answer again. The guide runs that as a fixed procedure on one subtopic at a time, about twenty minutes a session.
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Step 1 · Closed book
Cover the answers. Work through one subtopic and write down what you can. Leave blanks where you have nothing.
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Step 2 · Open book
Go back to the top. Read each printed answer and write it out in full, including the ones you had right.
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Step 3 · Closed book again
Same questions, same order, from memory. The gap between pass one and pass three is the session result.
Read the full method, the return schedule and the research behind it.
Nearby topics
Edexcel GCSE Geography A Active Recall Guide
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