Write your research question
An environmental issue, a place you can get to, and a rough sense of the system. If any of those three is missing, this sentence cannot be written yet.
- One sentence, as a question or a comparison statement
- Something you compare, something you measure, and a named place
- No strategy, stakeholders or policy in it
The smallest section in the report, and the one that decides the rest of it.
Fifty words out of 2,900. Everything downstream inherits whatever you fix in place here, which is why it is worth writing five versions and throwing four away rather than settling on the first one that sounds academic.
Something almost nobody knows
The official teacher support material says so directly and gives its own worked example as a comparison statement. What it must do is make clear what the quantities are and how they relate, so that it guides an appropriate method. A full stop is allowed.
How does plant species diversity differ between a managed ski piste and adjacent montane forest at Mijoux, and how does it relate to canopy cover and soil compaction?
A comparison of plant species diversity, canopy cover and soil compaction between a managed ski piste and adjacent montane forest at Mijoux, Monts Jura.
For fieldwork we tend to prefer the statement. "How does X affect Y" is the grammar of an experiment, and it quietly promises a causal claim that a comparison of two places cannot deliver. A comparison statement claims exactly what you did.
Everything below is how we suggest you actually do it.
Three parts, all present
Whatever form you choose, the same components have to be in there. If you cannot underline each of them in your own sentence, it is not finished.
Note the singular in the middle card. Measure one dependent variable. Collecting three or four things you might use later feels like insurance, and reads as an investigation that never decided what it was asking, a moderator report on this school's own ESS work said exactly that, noting that several dependent variables in place of one reduced the validity of the study. Nothing gets the sampling, the treatment or the analysis it needed.
Where an organism is central, name it properly: Vaccinium myrtillus rather than bilberry. It costs three words and it signals that you know what you were counting.
The thing you change or compare. Two sites, five distances, three management regimes.
The thing that responds. Named specifically enough that a method follows from it.
A real, named location. Without it there is no strategy to find in step 3.
Keep the strategy out of it
You will meet advice recommending a two-part research question, ending with something like "and how do stakeholder tensions affect the plan?" we think that is a mistake, and it is worth saying why since you may be told otherwise.
Your question is a promise about what your data will answer. Quadrats cannot answer a question about stakeholder tensions, so a two-part question guarantees that half of it goes unanswered, which is precisely what the focus strand is looking for.
Criterion B (Strategy) asks only that your issue has a clearly stated and credible connection to your question. The connection lives in the text, not in the sentence. Keep the question measurable and let step 3 do its own work.
How does piste management affect plant diversity at Mijoux, and how do tensions between the resort, the commune and conservation bodies shape the Monts Jura development plan?
A comparison of plant species diversity, canopy cover and soil compaction between a managed ski piste and adjacent montane forest at Mijoux (1,333 m), Monts Jura, France.
Three drafts, and what each fixed
Not a tidy illustration. This is the real sequence the worked example went through, including a mistake that survived into a full draft before anyone noticed.
No place, nothing measurable, and unanswerable in 3,000 words. Every word of it is a category rather than a thing.
Measurable now, but three problems. Still no location. "Disturbance" decides the answer before any data is collected. And "alpine" is simply wrong: at 1,333 m in the Jura this is below the treeline, which is why the comparison plot turned out to be forest.
Located precisely. Neutral about whether management helps or harms, which matters because the result went the unexpected way. The three variables the question turns on are named, so the abiotic work is part of it rather than an extra. Soil moisture was measured too and deliberately left out; it earns its place in the analysis, not in the sentence.
A hypothesis, if you want one
Optional, and not assessed. It is allowed because it can help you think, not because anyone will give you marks for it. If it clarifies the relationship you expect, include it; if it is decoration, leave it out.
One rule if you do. Do not write it as a null and alternative pair unless you are going to run a statistical test, and if you do include them, you must return to them in step 6 and say which one your data supports. An unanswered null hypothesis is a loose end an examiner will notice.
The original predicted lower diversity on the piste, because disturbance damages habitats. Reasonable, well argued, and contradicted by the data.
That is not a problem in itself; a refuted hypothesis is a perfectly good result. It became a problem because the question had "disturbance" built into it, so the framing and the finding pulled against each other all the way to the conclusion. Neutral wording in the question would have cost nothing and saved all of it.
Word your question neutrally even when you are confident which way the data will go. A question that assumes its answer still has to be lived with if the answer turns out to be the other one.
It can argue with a question you have already written: is it measurable, is the place specific enough, does it assume its own answer?
It cannot write it for you. This sentence decides everything downstream, and a question you did not write is one you cannot defend or adjust when the fieldwork turns out differently.
Ready for step 3?
0 of 10Read your sentence against each of these. Nine checks for fifty words is the right ratio.
Your question is deliberately silent about people. Step 3 is where they arrive, and where your named location starts earning its keep: somebody, somewhere, has a plan for that place, and not everybody agrees with it.
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. Photographs are the author’s own, taken at the site.