Choosing your topic

• You need to choose a relevant topic in biology to investigate.
• Your topic must be agreed with your teacher or lecturer.

Deciding your aim

• Once you have chosen your topic you need to decide what the aim of your investigation is. Remember that you need to do an experiment/fieldwork and find data/information to compare with your experimental/fieldwork results.
• Your teacher or lecturer will provide advice on the suitability of your aim, in terms of safety and availability of resources. They will not assess your aim.

Experimental/fieldwork research

• When choosing your experiment/fieldwork, remember it must allow measurements to be taken.
• When carrying out your experiment/fieldwork, you must either work on your own or as part of a small group. If you are working as part of a small group, you must take an active part.
• Make sure you take a sufficient number of measurements over a wide enough range to meet the aim of your investigation.
• You must obtain repeat measurements. This should be done by repeating your experiment/fieldwork.
• Your raw experimental data may be tabulated; however, tables must not have additional blank or pre-populated columns for average and derived values.
• You will use your raw experimental/fieldwork data during the report stage.

Internet/literature research

You must carry out your own internet/literature research.

• You need to find data/information from the internet, books and/or journals that you can compare to your experimental/fieldwork data. This could be a table or a graph, or information such as a diagram or text that is relevant to your aim. This does not need to exactly match your experimental/fieldwork data but could illustrate the trend or pattern expected.
• It is important that you record where you get your data/information from in enough detail that another person could find it. This is known as a reference.
• In your report you will need to describe the biology relevant to your aim. You can gather extracts from the internet, books and/or journals to help you write your account of the underlying biology. An extract must be from an internet/literature source — not from centre-devised course material or class notes. It must be a direct copy, which can be a printout, photocopy or handwritten (word for word) and must not be annotated. There is no size limit on an extract; however, it must be an extract and not the full document.
• During the report stage you will need to show your understanding by writing your description of the biology relevant to your aim using your own words.