Fieldwork Skills » Analysing and Evaluating Fieldwork

From data to meaning

You have planned your enquiry, collected your data and presented it. Now comes the thinking. Section B of the exam rewards students who can explain what their results show and how far they can be trusted. The spec calls these the cognitive enquiry skills.

Key terms:

• Analysis: reviewing and interpreting your quantitative and qualitative information to find patterns.
• Mean: the total of all the values divided by how many values there are.
• Median: the middle value when the values are put in order.
• Mode: the value that appears most often.
• Range: the highest value minus the lowest value.
• Line of best fit: a line drawn through a scatter graph to show the general trend.
• Stakeholder: a person or group with an interest in an issue.
• Evaluation: judging how accurate, suitable and trustworthy your data and methods were.
• Conclusion: the final answer to your question or hypothesis, backed by evidence.

Analysing your findings

Good analysis uses both kinds of data. Look at the numbers (quantitative) and at the sketches, photographs and comments (qualitative). Then ask three questions:

• What is the pattern? Does the value rise, fall or stay the same?
• What are the exceptions? Is any result very different from the rest?
• What does the evidence say about my hypothesis?

Use figures from your results when you describe a pattern. "Pebbles get smaller" is weak. "Pebbles fall from a mean of 60 mm at site 1 to a mean of 20 mm at site 5" is strong.

Simple descriptive statistics

Statistics boil a list of results down to one or two useful numbers.

Lines of best fit

A scatter graph plots one measurement against another, such as distance downstream against river width. If the points slope upwards, there is a positive relationship: as one rises, so does the other. If they slope downwards, the relationship is negative.

A line of best fit shows the trend. Draw it with a ruler so that about the same number of points lie above and below it. It does not need to pass through every point, and it should not simply join the first and last dots. Points far from the line are exceptions, so look for a reason, such as a tributary joining the river or a measurement that was taken badly.

Stakeholders and conflict

Fieldwork often connects to real issues, such as a plan for new sea defences, a new car park by a river or a flood warning system. Stakeholders will see the same plan in very different ways. Your job is to identify each view, give the reason for it and recognise that people can feel strongly about it.

To deal with a conflict, list who is affected, state what each person wants and why, then compare the views. A compromise, such as a smaller car park with a wildlife area beside it, may satisfy more people. Use questionnaires and interviews to collect views, but remember that a few opinions do not speak for everyone.

Evaluating your findings

Evaluation means reviewing your data and information to decide whether it is accurate and suitable for the purpose, or misleading and unreliable. You met accurate and reliable data in Collecting Fieldwork Data. Now ask more questions.

• Is it suitable? Did the method measure what the enquiry needed? A weather diary kept for one day cannot show a seasonal pattern.
• Is it enough? A tiny sample, such as five questionnaires, may not represent everyone.
• Could it be misleading? Results taken on an unusual day, such as just after a storm, show an unusual picture. A questionnaire given only outside a cafe can leave out people who never go there. Secondary data can be old, so check the date.
• What went wrong, and what would you change? Name a real weakness and a fix, such as repeating each reading three times and taking a mean.

Writing a conclusion

A conclusion is your final judgement. A strong one does four things.

1. Answers the question or hypothesis directly: supported, partly supported or not supported.
2. Uses evidence from your results, including figures.
3. Gives a geographical reason for the pattern.
4. Mentions limits, because weaker data makes you less certain.

Common mistakes

Exam-style question

A student measured river velocity (in m/s) at six sites: 0.2, 0.4, 0.3, 0.5, 0.4, 0.8. The student read the stopwatch only once at each site.

(a) Calculate the median velocity and the range. [2 marks]

(b) Suggest one way the student could make the data more reliable. [1 mark]

(c) A new car park is planned next to the river. Explain why a cafe owner and a wildlife group might disagree about it. [2 marks]