Planning (6pts)

This criterion assesses the extent to which the student has developed appropriate methods to gather data that is relevant to the research question. This data could be primary or secondary, qualitative or quantitative, and may utilize techniques associated with both experimental or social science methods of inquiry. There is an assessment of safety, environmental and ethical considerations where applicable.

Independent and dependent variables (IV & DV):

Identify your independent and dependent variables. Again, you can start general, but provide specific clarifying details with the units and range of treatments.
- For example: Independent variable - construction of solar farm - comparing remaining with the current power system of oil shale power plants verses the addition of a solar farm to offset the current structure. Dependent variable (1) - economic impacts as measured in total costs in Euros of the project and long term cost adjustments to price per kilowatt hour. Dependent variable (2) - environmental impacts as measured by population impacts of fish and birds from similar wind farms and total greenhouse gas reductions with offset to oil shale per year.
- For example - Independent variable - temperature of water, with five treatments of 1, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35 degrees Celsius. Dependent variable - amount of carbon dioxide diffused as measured by change in pH of water.

Controlled variables (CV):

Identify the relevant variables that need to be controlled. For each variable explain the importance of controlling the variable (what would happen if it wasn’t controlled) and how you will control it.
- For example: The level of carbon dioxide added to the beaker with the water - because of the tendency for molecules to diffuse faster with a steeper concentration gradient, if some trials had higher concentrations of carbon dioxide, you would expect faster rates of diffusion, which could result in greater drops in pH. The level of carbon dioxide used was measured at 50 0000 ppm in the beaker with a CO2 probe, prior to adding the water. This ensured that any pH changes were due to temperature differences, rather than CO2 concentration.

Design/Procedure/Methods:

Introduce your methods with a description of how you measured your dependent variable and how you manipulated your independent variable.
- For example - To determine the economic impacts of the solar farm I used statistics from the costs of other solar farms in Europe to calculate the average cost of construction. I then compared this cost to the cost of the fines that would be placed on Czech Republic for not meeting their emissions targets.
- For example - As the carbon dioxide creates carbonic acid, to measure the amount of carbon dioxide that diffused into the water I measured the change in pH of the water exposed to carbon dioxide for ten minutes.
Then go into more detail, be sure to include
- Identify the materials used, if you have a specialized setup, include a picture or diagram.
- Identify the treatments and number of trials, if you plan to calculate standard deviation you will need at least 5 trials per treatment.
- Describe how the dependent variable was measured.
- Identify the treatment considered the control.
- Describe how you planned to interpret your results after data collection.
Justify your choice of sampling strategy
- If using secondary data explain how and why you selected the data you did. Is the source reliable, useful, etc.
- In an experiment, justify why you used the setup you did. Were there other options to measure what you were measuring? Why is yours best?
Describe the risks and ethical considerations, if you feel there aren’t any explain why.

Planning (20%)

* Repeatable, in this context, means that sufficient detail is provided for the reader to be able to replicate the data collection for another environment or society. It does not necessarily mean repeatable in the sense of replicating it under laboratory conditions to obtain a number of runs or repeats in which all the control variables are exactly the same.

MAY 2023 SUBJECT REPORT (IB's feedback on what students did well, and did not)

"All students, bar a few, attempt a plan. Planning for sufficient data collection to answer the RQ and providing justifications for the choices made in the plan are often the hardest aspects of this criterion. The aspect most often missing is the ethics & risks. The procedure to collect data should enable the investigation to be repeated. The method is often lacking in enough details to ensure repeatability.

Field based investigations must detail the rationale for the site choice, and detail the actual sites chosen. Then the collection of a sample or data from the site must also be specified. Survey or questionnaire investigations should include the questions and justify why these questions are asked. The survey should not be in an appendix. How and why the participants are chosen, and how the survey is distributed are part of the procedure for a survey.

Secondary data investigations must mention the source used to collect the data and the ethics behind why this is a suitable data source. How the data is extracted from the database or website should be detailed in the plan.

In laboratory investigations the justification for the independent variable treatments should be given. The collection of sufficient data varies depending upon the type of statistical manipulation that will be done to answer the RQ. This must be addressed in the plan. Secondary and survey data usually require more data points than a lab-based investigation.

There is no need to copy out test kit instructions or how to set up a spreadsheet, calculate statistics or how to create a survey. It is sufficient to state that an application or kit has been used, giving the name for repeatability purposes. Some students had a planning section that did not address the RQ."

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