Choosing a topic for your Internal Assessment in History

• An Internal Assessment in History involves applying your skills to explore a topic of personal interest in an imaginative, critical, focused way.
• It is important that you choose a topic that lends itself to critical investigation and analysis (e.g. the causes, consequences or significance of an event, development or individual), rather than one that steers you towards a descriptive or narrative piece of writing.
• You cannot investigate the same question that frames your Extended Essay, but beyond this you have great freedom to choose your period, place and theme.
• The only date restriction is that the study must cover a period after 750 AD, and that contemporary topics must be studied historically (e.g. you can study the CAUSES of a contemporary conflict, but not its consequences).

TOP TIP: Use the ActiveHistory IBDP Historical Question Generator to help you at this stage!
www.activehistory.co.uk/ibdp/question-generator

TOP TIP: Use the ActiveHistory Historical Podcast Database to search for your favoured topic!
www.activehistory.co.uk/library/podcasts

Framing your question

• You should then use your topic to generate a workable, focused research question.
• Key points to consider when framing your question:
  • Is my question framed around a command term which allows for an evaluative approach (e.g. "To what extent...?", “How far...?”, “How successful...?”, “How significant...?").
  • Is the inquiry question focused enough to be answered within the time and word limit?
  • Can my inquiry question by answered from a variety of angles / factors / perspectives?
  • Are there sufficient relevant and diverse sources that I can access?
  • If my inquiry question is contemporary, can I address it historically (e.g. CAUSES of a current event rather than its RESULTS)?

TOP TIP: Use the ActiveHistory IBDP Historical Question Generator to help you at this stage!
www.activehistory.co.uk/ibdp/question-generator

The following table could help you get started.

Here are some sample questions that might give you some ideas.

• “Evidence based"
  • How useful are oral testimonies in understanding civilian experiences during the Partition of India in 1947?
  • How significant are archaeological discoveries in shaping modern understanding of Viking settlement in Britain?
  • To what extent do declassified government documents improve historians’ understanding of the Cuban Missile Crisis?
    
• “Event based”
  • To what extent did militant Zionist groups influence British withdrawal from Palestine between 1945 and 1948?
  • How significant was the storming of the Bastille in causing the French Revolution?
  • How successful was the policy of appeasement in preventing war in Europe between 1936 and 1939?
    
• “People based”
  • To what extent was Napoleon Bonaparte responsible for the spread of nationalism in Europe?
  • How significant was the contribution of Emmeline Pankhurst to women’s suffrage in Britain?
  • How successful was Mikhail Gorbachev in reforming the Soviet Union between 1985 and 1991?

Identifying your sources

• You will be expected to locate and make use of a diverse range of primary and secondary sources in your Internal Assessment.
• NOTE: You will only be allowed to use only a maximum of SEVEN sources, so choose these very carefully.
• Engaging with different types of sources, such as primary and secondary sources, and considering a range of perspectives will be highly beneficial.
• The following links might prove useful.

JSTOR | Google Books Search | Google Scholar Search | Amazon Search | BBC History Magazine Search | History Today Magazine Search | ActiveHistory Podcast Archive

Submitting your Internal Assessment Proposal Form

• You are now ready to complete the Initial Proposal Sheet and hand it to your teacher.
• Make sure that this is a detailed, considered proposal. Your supervisor will schedule a meeting with you to talk about how you plan to structure your essay in particular.

Title page (not included in the word count)

• A title page is not formally required by the IBO, but it provides a good opportunity to clearly state your question and the word count (which is required).
• Use it to include the following sort of information:

Top Tip: You might also choose to include an accompanying relevant image, but if you do so make sure you include a caption in the Chicago format.

Section 1: Historical Inquiry Question (6 marks, 400 words)

• In this section, you need to clearly state the historical inquiry question and provide a full explanation of how this question is appropriate for historical inquiry. It will also provide precise and detailed references to an appropriate concept, with a clear explanation of how this concept informs the historical inquiry.
• The four specified concepts (cause and consequence, continuity and change, perspectives, significance) can be a very useful starting point in helping students to formulate a question.
• However, students are not limited to the specified concepts of the course and can identify a different concept that they have explored in their course, or elsewhere, to guide their inquiry.

Section 2: Sources and Perspectives (6 marks, 400 words)

• In this section, provide a well-developed explanation of how the sources you have chosen (seven sources maximum) provide diverse historical perspectives, and clearly explain how the perspectives will help answer your historical inquiry question.
• Engaging with different types of sources, such as primary and secondary sources, and considering a range of perspectives will be highly beneficial.

Sample idea about how Section 2 could be planned out (each row forming the basis of a separate paragraph)

Section 3: Synthesis and Evaluation (1400 words, 12 marks)

• This section is a sustained analysis that is clearly focused on the historical inquiry question. This analysis is fully supported with evidence from the sources used in section 2, and these sources are evaluated in terms of their reliability / utility.
  This section should end with a carefully reasoned judgement that is consistent with the analysis.
• On the simplest level, Section 3 could therefore be regarded as an expansion of Section 2, which provides the ‘abstract’ of the argument. In other words, you could feasibly copy and paste Section 2 as the starting point for Section 3, and then expand it with more evidence from the sources and background knowledge, and add an overall conclusion.
• However, this is intellectually rather repetitive and undemanding. So a good way to develop your ideas from Section 2 would be to take the planning grid for Section 2, and base the paragraphs around the COLUMNS rather than the ROWS:

Sample idea about how the planning grid for Section 2 could be repurposed for Section 3 (each column now forming the basis of a separate paragraph. rather than each row)

Bibliography (not included in the word count)

• A bibliography, which clearly references a maximum of seven sources used in the IA, must be included at the end of the study. This is not included in the overall word limit.
• All sources should be listed alphabetically (by author surname), using the Chicago format.
• This bibliography must list only the sources cited in the footnotes (remember: a MAXIMUM of seven sources is allowed in total).
• TOP TIP: You should maintain a bibliography and a list of page references from the outset. That way you are less likely to forget to include a citation. It is also easier than trying to add references at a later stage.
  

Footnotes

• Footnotes should only be used for referencing your chosen sources, using the Chicago format:
• Author. Title (Publisher, Date), Page, e.g.
  Tarr, Russel. Luther and the Reformation 1500-64 (Hachette, 2015), Page 27

Top Tip: Use the ClassTools Citation Generator to efficiently generate your footnotes:
www.classtools.net/citation-generator

• Any references to interviews should state the names of the interviewer and interviewee, the date and the place of the interview.
• Websites that do not give references or that cannot be cross-checked against other sources should be avoided.
• Avoid footnotes to lame sources like Wikipedia, GCSE Bitesize, History.com, Biography.com and similar. These are amateurish!
• Any information that is important to the argument must not be included in appendices or footnotes/endnotes. The examiner will not read notes or appendices.

Use of tables, maps, charts, illustrations

• These should appear in the body of the essay, as close as possible to their first reference. Such sources should only be used if they are relevant and appropriate to a point being made as part of the argument of the essay.
• Any labelling should be clear and contain the minimum information to ensure the examiner understands the significance of the map, chart, table, diagram, image or illustration.