Hi guys, let’s talk about the part of ESS that is worth 25% of your final grade at Standard Level and 20% at Higher Level: the internal assessment.
It is essentially a research report that you write around a specific environmental issue. It gives you a small look into what it is like to be a researcher trying to push forward the research that already exists on a topic. Depending on what you choose to study later, you might see research papers structured like this again and again at university.
Your class might work from the same overall setup or investigation, while each of you collects your own slice of data or investigates a different variable.
You might choose the issue, variables, method and data completely independently. Either way, your own contribution needs to remain clear.
If you have full freedom over what to choose, this is usually the part that feels most overwhelming.
Should you pick something that genuinely interests you? Not necessarily. But if you are going to spend real time looking into something, it might as well be something you are at least a little curious about. What matters more is choosing something you can realistically see yourself looking into and actually completing.
Within that topic, come up with something specific that could actually be studied. Usually, that means identifying an independent variable and a dependent variable, or two variables you can compare.
If X changes, how does it impact Y?
That relationship becomes your research question.
You do something yourself: fieldwork, a lab experiment, an observation or a survey. It can take more effort up front, but later it often gives you more to evaluate because you actually designed the method.
You work with data that already exists. The important thing is that you use it to test your own relationship rather than just repeating somebody else’s analysis.
You are explaining the environmental issue and taking the examiner step by step toward your exact research question.
I like to think of Criterion A a little bit like an hourglass. Start broad with the environmental issue, then narrow down step by step until your research question feels like the most natural thing to investigate given everything you have just explained. Once you reach the question, zoom back out again.
Deforestation is a major issue globally → therefore understanding what drives it matters → food production and consumption can contribute to land-use change → look at a country with significant forest cover → ask whether local food consumption is associated with forest loss → therefore investigate the relationship between beef consumption and forest loss in Brazil.
This criterion is newer, and it is easiest to understand if you start from the idea that your environmental issue is probably not new.
Governments, companies or individuals have likely already tried to address the issue in one way or another. But solutions are rarely simple. The IB wants you to show that by looking at one real existing or developing strategy and then explaining the different perspectives around it.
Costs, jobs, income, competitiveness, access.
Fairness, habits, identity, community needs.
Regulation, public support, ecological goals, enforcement.
Someone else should be able to follow it and do exactly what you did, not their own version of what they think you probably did.
“I went to the park and placed quadrats at different distances from the path. I counted the species in each quadrat and compared the results.”
There is no separate current ESS criterion called “independent, dependent and controlled variables,” but you should still make them very clear. Your research question should identify the key variables, and your method should explain the ranges, intervals, measurements and controls that make the investigation fair and repeatable.
What did you originally record? What did you do to process it? And how did that processing help you get closer to answering the research question?
Clear labels, titles and legends.
Correct units, sensible decimal places and significant figures.
Means, percentages, indices, statistics or qualitative processing that actually help answer the RQ.
This is where you stop presenting the data and start interpreting how far it answers your research question.
For Criterion F, the more specific and self-critical you can be, the better. Do not just list things that could technically have gone wrong. Pick weaknesses that actually mattered, explain how they may have affected your data or conclusion, then give an improvement that directly fixes that problem.
What specifically went wrong or constrained the investigation?
How could it affect the data/conclusion, and what would directly fix it?
What still cannot be answered, and how does that limit your conclusion?
The IB does not require these exact headings, but I recommend them because they make your report much easier to plan and much easier for the examiner to follow.
Click each section below. This is where I would actually break down what should come in that part, what order I would write it in, and what to avoid.