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Section checklist:
This is an overall checklist of all the sections and ‘extras’ that you need to
include in your project. Tick them off as you complete them
REMEMBER:
Leave the contents page until last as you need to number all the pages first!
Section Heading
Title page (including name, candidate number and title of your
project
Contents (list all your sections and give the page numbers)
Introduction and aims
Data Collection (method or methodology)
Data Presentation (graphs, tables, photographs, diagrams)
Analysis (explaining what your results show)
Conclusion (your overall findings)
Bibliography (list of books and websites you used)
Acknowledgements (people who helped you)
Appendix (your raw data and any leaflets, fliers etc.)
Completed
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COMMON QUESTIONS:
WHO AM I ALLOWED TO ASK FOR HELP?
You can speak to your teachers who will suggest ideas on how to carry
out your investigation.
You can ask your teacher to read your work and provide feedback and
ideas on how to improve
They CANNOT write your project or tell you what to say!
HOW LONG IS THE PROJECT?
Depending on your exam board (check with your teacher or look at the
relevant web site for info) they are normally between 1500 and 2500
words. Each section should be approximately 500 words in length.
WHAT IS IT WORTH?
Most GCSE Geography projects are worth 25% of your final mark –
again check your exam board website or ask your teacher. If your
coursework is good it can make the difference between grades in your
final exam. This could mean the difference between a ‘B’ grade and an
‘A’ grade.
WHAT ABOUT ICT?
Most exam boards require you to do some work using ICT this can be
graphs, writing, using digital images, using maps or scanning
photographs. Aim to include at least 3 TO 4 elements of ICT in your
project.
REMEMBER: You must produce SOME hand drawn work – e.g. maps,
graphs or field sketches.
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WHAT IS A BIBLIOGRAPHY?
It is a list of books that you have used (an example is below)
Author
Widdowson, J.
Date
2003
Book Title
Earthworks 3
Publisher
Murray
You must also include a list of websites you have used.
HOW SHOULD I PRESENT MY PROJECT?
Neatly! You must place your work in a plain cardboard or plastic
folder. Not in large A4 folders and definitely no individual plastic
sheets.
WHAT ABOUT THE TITLE AND SECTION HEADINGS?
It makes it easier for the marker if you have a separate heading page
for each section:
SECTION ONE
INTRODUCTION &
AIMS
An investigation into
the impact of
tourism on Lulworth
Cove - Dorset
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SECTION ONE: INTRODUCTION
There are four parts to your introduction:
Aim:
What is your overall aim of the project?
The main aim of this investigation is to discover whether tourism has
a negative impact on Lulworth Cove.
Hypotheses:
Individual statements that you hope to test e.g. and how you are going to
test them
Lulworth Cove has a large sphere of influence which I will test by
carrying out 75 questionnaires.
You then need to explain each of these:
This is because Lulworth is part of the famous Jurassic Coastline and
is a physical honey pot for visitors therefore I believe that people
will travel a long way in order to experience its beauty.
Location:
Describe the area you are studying
 Where – use road names, maps, direction, places it is close to.
 Physical features – what is the area like – rocky, undulating, mild
climate etc
 Draw a map pinpointing the location
Background:
A brief history or background of your location:
Lulworth Cove has recently been placed into the World Heritage Jurassic
Coastline, this will hopefully sustain and preserve the areas outstanding beauty
for years to come and also act as a pull to visitors. It has been a popular tourist
attraction since the beginning of the nineteenth century when the advent of the
motor car allowed day trippers to easily access the area.
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SECTION TWO: DATA COLLECTION
In this Chapter you must describe in detail how you collected the data
on your fieldwork day.
For every method, you must include the following information:
 What you did
 Why you did it
 How it relates to meeting the coursework aims
 What the strengths and weaknesses are
 What data tables or collection record sheets you used and why
You could present this in a table:
What
Questionnaire
You must explain
why you asked
each question
e.g. ‘Where have
you travelled
from today?’ We
asked this in
order to find
out how large
Lulworth sphere
of influence
was.
Where
At 50
different
locations
around
Lulworth
Cove (see
map for
study area)
Why
In order
to find
out
people’s
opinions
on
tourism
When
Friday
July 10th
2007
between
12 and
2pm
Limitations
We worked in groups of
3 for safety and as
there many other
groups working at the
same there was a
danger of asking the
same person twice. It
was a school day and
therefore not as bus as
it would have been in
the summer holidays.
We only had a limited
amount of time to
collect answers.
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SECTION THREE: DATA PRESENTATION & ANALYSIS
This is where you get a chance to show of your ICT (computer) skills, in
order to get high marks you need to use a variety of graphs and methods.
Choose the most appropriate for your study. Use at least 4 different
methods to show your data.
1. Bar Graph (good for traffic surveys or questionnaires)
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
East
West
North
1st Qtr 2nd Qtr 3rd Qtr 4th Qtr
2.
Pie Chart (good for people’s opinions on questionnaires)
beach
garden
sea
flow ers
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3. Radar Graph (good for environmental quality scores)
car park
museum
shop
garden
4. Annotated photographs
Heavily eroded
path from over use
This shows the
effect of tourism as
the path has been
closed off
Litter
Noise
Smell
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5. Statistical Maps (good for showing amounts of people in an area)
Choropleth (colour shaded) maps. This is the most
common type, and is especially appropriate for showing
standardized data such as rates, densities or
percentages. A different colour is used for each of a
number of bands, allowing users to identify which areas
have high, low or middling values.
Proportional symbol maps. These use symbols that
are proportional in size to the values they represent,
such that the biggest symbol will fall in the area with
the highest value. Symbols can include circles, bars, or
objects indicating what is being measured. This type of
map is better for count data.
Dot maps. Individual events or groups of events are
marked with a dot, allowing users to geographic
patterns such as clusters. The most famous use of this
technique was by Dr John Snow, who mapped cholera
deaths in an outbreak in London in 1854 and was able
to show that they were concentrated around a particular
water pump.*
6. Scatter graph (to explore the relationship between tow variables
e.g. width and depth of a stream)
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
XY (Scatter) 1
XY (Scatter) 2
0
1
2
3
4
5
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7.
Cross Section (good for rivers or depth of erosion)
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
site 1
8.
Depth
site 2
site 3
site 4
Spearman’s Rank
This is designed to discover whether there is a relationship between 2
pieces of data. For example is there a relationship between the width
and depth of a river. See the following page for a complete
explanation and worked example.
http://geographyfieldwork.com/SpearmansRank.htm
For each of your graphs you must describe what it shows:
beach
garden
Graph One: Which location at
Lulworth Cove do you think is
most attractive?
sea
flow ers
one shows
that
GraphGraph
one show
that approximately
60% of visitors think that the sea is the most
attractive feature at Lulworth Cove. The garden is the second most attractive with
25% of visitors, the beach third with 13% and the flowers last with 12%.
Then try and explain it:
This could be because the sea on this area of the Jurassic coast is particularly clean
with a blue flag award as well as being relatively calm and traffic free. The cove itself
is home to traditional fishing boats as well as divers, all of which make it a most
attractive location. The beach on the other hand although clean is made from
pebbles which some people find uncomfortable and this could account for the lower
scores here.
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4: CONCLUSION
This is a one page summary of what you found out in your study –
summarising the conclusions you have made from your data presentation and
analysis.




Go through each aim or hypotheses in turn
State whether you proved or disproved it or answered the question
Which graphs or data tables/maps etc back your answer up
Say whether it supports the theory that you mentioned in the first
chapter. E.g. if you are looking at rivers did your river fit the model
developed by Bradshaw.
Example: Hypothesis 1
The effect of tourism on Lulworth brings both positive and negative
effects
This hypothesis was proved correct graph 1 proved that 84% of visitors
believed the impacts of tourism were mainly positive, this was backed up in
graph 2 where they cited the management of footpaths and the introduction
of a visitor centre as having a positive effect on the environment. Pictures 4,
5 & 6 however, highlighted the negative impacts of tourism such as litter in
the car park and graffiti on the beautiful natural arch of Durdle Door. This
supports the theory put forward by Nagle who believes that tourism is am
mixed blessing to areas of outstanding natural beauty.
You need an overall final paragraph that sums up your findings:
Overall the effects of tourism on Lulworth Cove were largely negative – out
of the six methods I investigated 4 of them were negative….
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5. EVALUATION




You need to describe any limitations in your methods
How the limitation in the method will have affected your results (refer to
actual graphs and points on graphs that may have been affected)
How the limitation in the method will have affected your conclusions (refer
to actual conclusions and hypothesis)
Explain if and how you could eliminate this limitation in an ideal world/if
you did the project again
Limitation in
methodology
How this affected
my results
How this affected
my conclusion
To measure the depth
of the river at each
point, I took an
average of just three
depth measurements
only. If one of these
points was measured
inaccurately, or was an
anomaly (e.g. due to
there being a large
boulder on the river
bed!) then the average
depth might have
been inaccurate.
As graph 3 shows, I
did not find that
depth increased as
you went
downstream. In
particular, the depth
at site 1 was greater
than at any of the
others (see circled
cross on graph 3).
This was probably
because of one of
the three depth
measurements was
vastly different from
the others and was
an inaccurate
measurement.
I concluded that
depth did not
increase downstream.
This conclusion may
be false and may just
be caused by my
inaccurate
measurement at site
1.
Possible ways to
eliminate the
limitation if the
project was
repeated
I could take many
more (10)
measurements of
depth across the
river and average
these. This means
any one inaccurate
measurement
would have less of
an affect on the
overall average.