Eight steps to your ESS IA
The internal assessment (IA) is the biggest single piece of work in the course, it is worth a quarter of your grade, and for most people it is the first time they have written anything like it.
It is also, genuinely, the interesting part. You choose somewhere real, find out what is happening to it, and argue something about what should be done. What follows is the order we suggest doing that in, and why.
The process
Each step produces something the next one needs. The word counts are what we suggest spending when you eventually write that section up, not what to write now.
The IB sets no section word counts and no required order. Four of these figures come from InThinking's guidance and three are ours. The order is entirely ours, and the next section explains the one part of it that will surprise you.
Why the strategy comes third
Most people design their fieldwork and then, somewhere near the end, add a section about stakeholders. We put it before the method, and it is the most consequential decision in this whole guide.
Here is the reasoning. A fieldwork report has a natural shape that assembles itself: transect, quadrats, an index, a statistical test, a conclusion. That shape is what almost every example online looks like. What it never produces on its own is a strategy and the people arguing about it.
So that layer is not something you can lose. It is something that will not appear unless you deliberately put it there. Settle the argument first and your data gets collected to serve it. Leave it until week eleven and you will be hunting for a strategy that fits results you already have.
Choose the argument before you choose the measurements, and your investigation will have something to be about.
What makes this an ESS investigation
ESS is the first interdisciplinary subject in the Diploma, and the investigation is where that has to be visible. Three ideas run through the course, and a strong report carries all three.
Your variable sits inside something with inputs, outputs, stores and feedbacks. Not a list of measurements.
People want incompatible things, and what happens to an environment depends on how that gets resolved.
Whether what is happening can carry on, and at whose expense.
One criterion asks you to name a real strategy addressing your issue and explain a tension between the people who disagree about it. Four marks out of thirty, and it is the only part of the report that could not appear in a Biology or a Geography investigation.
That is not a reason to avoid biological or geographical methods. Quadrats, water chemistry and questionnaires are all fine, and the guidance says so. It is a reason to make sure there is an environmental issue and a live argument wrapped around whichever method you choose.
How to use this guide
Work through the steps in order. Each one opens with what you should be arriving with and closes with a checklist, and the checklist is the point rather than the decoration. It is the only part that asks about your investigation rather than explaining things in general.
Tick honestly. An untickable box is not a mark against you, it is simply the next thing to go and do. If you are signed in, your ticks are saved and your teacher can see how far along you are.
One thing before you start
You will get one round of written feedback on a full draft. Your teacher can comment on what is strong and what is weak, but they cannot correct it, and there is no second draft after that.
Which means two things. Hand over something complete rather than something polished, because feedback on three finished sections and five missing ones is feedback on three sections. And aim for 2,900 words rather than 3,000, because that feedback will almost certainly ask you to develop something, and at the ceiling the only way to do that is to delete something good.
Most advice tells you to choose a topic. We think you should choose a place, and step 1 explains why.
Start step 1See the worked example and its real sources
The ski piste investigation used throughout this guide is a teaching reconstruction. The location, sampling design, plant records and soil data come from real fieldwork at Mijoux in the French Jura. Canopy cover measurements were added to illustrate good practice and were not part of the original fieldwork. It is written to show how an ESS investigation is built, not to report findings about biodiversity at this site.