Chapter 11: The Extended Essay
Chapter 11
The Extended
Essay
(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
Getting Started
Wide Reading and Narrowing Your Focus
Crafting a Research Question
Sources and Resources
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The Extended Essay (EE) is one way the IB Diploma Programme attempts to help
you develop the skills needed to pursue independent and effective research in a subject
of interest. It also provides you with practice in writing an essay of considerable length
(4,000 words), which is an invaluable skill for those of you heading towards further
academic study.
If you are writing your EE in Psychology, you need to choose a topic that’s interesting and is approved by your supervisor. After you have selected a topic, you can
construct an initial research question that will get you started in the research and
writing process. Your final product is an essay of around 4,000 words (maximum).
The IB recommends spending approximately three to five hours with your supervisor throughout the process. Please remember that all the advice and guidance
included in this chapter is of secondary importance to the advice and guidance that
you will receive from them. There are also three mandatory reflection sessions that
must be completed during the course of the EE as well. Along with the essay, you will
also submit a reflection form of around 500 words (maximum) and your final session
will be a viva voce, which is an interview with your supervisor that is carried out with
the purpose of making sure the work you have submitted is your own.
The EE is a compulsory
requirement for diploma
candidates and is optional for
course candidates.
Your EE must not include primary research and you should be relying on secondary
sources of information only (i.e. research published in peer-reviewed journals or other
credible sources). You should not conduct your own interviews, experiments, surveys
or any other form of research. In fact, if you do include primary research in your EE
your essay may be flagged by the IB and you may fail the diploma. The IA is your
opportunity to conduct primary research – the EE requires you to examine existing
research.
The EE has the potential to be an interesting and exciting project. You have a head
start towards success if you are motivated, have a topic of interest that you wish to
explore, and some questions to get you started in the research process. If you take your
time to choose a topic to investigate that is interesting, you’ll find the EE will provide
you with an exhilarating sense of academic discovery as you uncover research and
formulate ideas that you never knew existed. Like any major project, one of the hardest
things is getting started, so the purpose of this chapter is to help you in the initial stages
of getting your EE project under way.
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(a)
Getting Started
I want to begin by reiterating the fact that all guidance here is secondary to the
guidance, support and advice you will receive from your EE supervisor. The EE process
is highly personalized and there are many variables that will influence your research
and writing along the way, so I can only provide very generic advice that will not be
as helpful as the targeted and specific guidance you can receive during your regular
meetings with your EE supervisor.
The EE is a challenging process for many reasons. For one, it demands a substantial time commitment and the IB advises that it should be the product of around 40
hours of work. Some students mistakenly think the EE in Psychology is easier than
other subjects, but this is a false assumption. To research and write about a topic in
Psychology is just as difficult as other subjects, so it should only be undertaken if you
have a genuine interest in what you are researching and you are motivated to spend the
time it takes to explore a topic in sufficient depth.
Many a little makes a mickle
– this philosophy is the key to
writing a good EE.
The first step in getting started with your EE is choosing a topic. It is acceptable
to study a topic that is related to something that you have studied during this course.
For example, when studying criminology you may have developed an interest in the
origins of violent crime and you might wish to explore this further. Perhaps there was
a very specific topic within this unit that you wished you had more time to study,
like alternative strategies to reduce recidivism. Using a topic that has been taught in
class can be a good starting point for your investigation. However, it should only be
the starting point. To write an excellent essay, you will need to go far beyond what’s
included in this or any other introductory textbook.
There might be an area of psychology that you wanted to explore that is not in this
book or the curriculum. For instance, you may wish to investigate an anxiety disorder,
like Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, but you haven’t learned about this in class. It is
fine to choose a topic that has not been taught, provided this is approved by your
supervisor.
It is important, however, that your topic is based on Psychology and not another
subject like Sociology or Economics. For example, conducting an investigation into
the social effects of the privatization of prisons in the US is more related to Economics
and Sociology because this topic lacks a focus on individual behaviour. Remember that
Psychology is the scientific study of individual behaviour and mental processes. Your
choice of topic, therefore, should be an investigation
into some aspect of individual human behaviour. You
may wish to make it simple and choose a topic that
explores the relationship between a specific variable
and a specific behaviour.
You need to go well beyond
the information that is
summarized in textbooks like
this one if you want to write an
excellent EE.
Choosing a topic may begin with identifying
a behaviour that you are interested in, such as
depression, conformity, aggression, psychopathy,
drug addiction, etc. You can then begin narrowing
your focus into a particular area of study in relation
to this behaviour, like causes, effects or methods of
treatment.
Alternatively, you might begin by thinking of a
variable that you think (or know) has an effect on
human behaviour, such as the use of social media,
You probably won't come up with the best topic or question straight away. It will
take some careful reading and researching.
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Chapter 11: The Extended Essay
drug use, poverty, depression, yoga, etc. You could begin with this and then begin
exploring resources to craft your topic. To put it another way, you might begin with a
specific IV and consider how this might affect a DV, or the other way around.
Having a broad question to
start with is perfectly fine, but
you won’t submit a very good
essay if your question is still
vague and general by the end
of your research.
It is fine to begin with a broad topic and narrow your focus as you progress
through the research process. For example, you might want to study stress. The first
question your supervisor will probably ask you is, “what about stress to do you want to
investigate?” This is where you will need to begin doing some wide reading and start
narrowing the focus of your investigation. On the other hand, you may have a specific
topic from the outset, such as how using Facebook can increase the chances of anxiety
disorders in teenagers. You may even know of some studies that have been conducted
on this phenomenon. The variability involved in the EE process makes providing
generic advice very difficult, so again, consult regularly with your advisor.
Some students of mine in the past have come to me with questions like, “I want to
know what makes people happy.” This is a genuinely interesting question and it’s a good
place to start if one is interested in this topic, but it will need to become more focused
as this is too broad. What I would tell my student in this case is, “that sounds like a
fascinating question, and if it’s still your question in a month’s time then you haven’t
done enough research.”
However you begin your investigation, you will ultimately need a focused topic
and an effective research question. Guidance on how to achieve this is included in the
following sections.
(b)
Wide reading involves
consulting a range of sources
of information that are related
to your topic in order to get a
better understanding of what it
is you want to investigate.
The more you know the easier
it will be to narrow your topic.
If you don’t know much in the
beginning, you’ll need to do
wide reading.
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Wide Reading and Narrowing Your Focus
Your EE needs to be based on a topic and a research question that can be effectively addressed in the word limit of 4,000 words. A question like, “What makes people
happy?” is an example of a question that is far too broad to be addressed effectively
because there are so many possible variables that may influence happiness.
You will only be able to narrow your focus if you have knowledge of the topic you
are investigating. If you have already started with a focused topic like the effects of
social media on anxiety in teenagers, this is probably because you are aware of research
in this field already.
Perhaps you have a focused topic, like the relationship between bilingualism and
academic success, but you don’t know much about this relationship. You’ve just guessed
that bilingualism is related to academic success somehow. Hypothesizing in this way
could be an effective way to begin your research process, but I would offer a word of
caution: if you begin with a focused topic that you don’t know much about you run
the risk of discovering that actually there’s no relationship there, or that there is very
little relevant research in this area. For this reason, if you are not sure if your topic has
been studied extensively, it might be wise to keep your topic broad to begin with as you
conduct your wide reading.
Throughout your reading you should be searching for ways to narrow the focus
of your topic and to construct an effective research question. For example, if I wanted
to know what makes people happy I would begin by reading to try to get a general
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idea of the existing research in this field. Because
I have no specific variables identified in my topic,
I would be trying to see if there are particular
variables that are commonly studied in relation
to happiness. In the course of my wide reading
I might find that there are numerous studies on
correlations between wealth and happiness. So
now in the course of my wide reading I have
narrowed my focus to a relationship between two
variables: wealth and happiness.
The more you read and research the more
focused your topic and research question will
become. I advise my students that they shouldn’t
think of their topic or research question as
being set in stone, but always open to adjusting,
adapting and tweaking. This is especially true in
the early stages of the research process.
(c)
The earlier you start reading and researching, the better your final essay will be.
Crafting a Research Question
Generally speaking, the process of getting started in your investigation involves
first choosing a particular area of psychology that interests you. This might include a
broad or specific topic. Once you have done enough initial wide reading and you have
focused your topic sufficiently with help from your supervisor, you need to develop a
research question.
You can read more about
research questions and the
EE in our blog post called, “Is
this a good EE question?”
As the EE is highly individualized, the process of crafting an effective research
question will also vary greatly from student to student. In an ideal world you would
choose a topic, narrow that topic so it is focused and ensure that there is sufficient
research to conduct a thorough investigation. You would then construct a perfectly
written research question that would allow you to thoroughly investigate your topic
and produce a well-written essay. However, the realities of the research process is that
it’s seldom the case that you will begin with the same research question that you will
end up with. In fact, throughout the course of your research you won’t just be using
one research question, you will have many. Your overarching question should guide all
these other sub-questions that you will ask throughout the process. After all, during
your research you will be continually learning, and learning is about asking and finding
answers to questions.
For example, let’s say I chose the topic of what makes people happy. After doing
some wide reading I narrow this to focus on the relationship between money and
happiness. I then construct a research question, “Does money make people happy?” I
now have a starting point for my investigation and I can begin looking at studies (and
there are many) related to this question. Perhaps after doing quite a lot of research I
find a lot of evidence to suggest that there is in fact a correlation between money and
happiness. But perhaps the bulk of the evidence is focused on correlations between
personal wealth and well-being. I might even find a body of research that investigates
specific correlations between increasing personal wealth and personal well-being. So
now my question has evolved based on this body of new research that I have discovered and I am now asking, “How does wealth affect our well-being?” The change of
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Chapter 11: The Extended Essay
In the early stages of your
research process, it can
be beneficial to treat your
research question like an
evolving and living thing.
the phrasing from “Does” to “How” reveals the progression in my understanding of
the topic based on my research: my latter question implies that wealth does affect our
happiness, which is what is suggested by the many studies I have read about in my
research process. But looking at my question, I don’t like the word “our” because I
am not really investigating you and me. So I would tweak this slightly again to read,
“How does wealth affect individual well-being?” But still, I don’t like the word “does”
because this is definitive. Another tweaking and my new question is “How can wealth
affect individual well-being?” Even still I don’t like the word “individual” because it
seems too clunky, so I cut it out and I now have, what I think is an effective question to
continue with my research: “How can wealth affect well-being?”
The reason I have walked you through my thought-processes in the above paragraph
is because I want to show you how it can be beneficial to think of the research question
as a living thing that can evolve. You should be continually crafting and restructuring
your question to ensure that it accurately represents what you are trying to explore in
your investigation. Obviously, the earlier you
construct a clear research question the more
focused and effective your writing processes
will be. This is where there is an obvious correlation between time and effort spent on the
research and the quality of your final product.
The more research you have gathered, read,
sorted and filtered the more informed your
research question will be.
It might even help to consider the research
question as more like the title of your final
essay, as opposed to one concrete, immovable
and unchangeable question that dictates the
entire research process.
The vast majority of IB Psychology EEs
begin
with the phrase, ‘To what extent…’ This is
Sculpting is a good metaphor to use when thinking about your EE process: you start
with a big hunk of clay (your broad topic) and you craft this into something refined and
because this question naturally encourages the
precise (your final research question). The writing of your essay will also resemble the
critical thinking by offering the possibility of
sculpting process, from taking all your chunky research findings and crafting them into
a well-written essay.
introducing one or more counter-arguments.
You can write excellent essays with this type of
question, but the following types of questions
could also make for excellent extended essays:
•
•
•
Does Facebook cause anxiety in teenagers?
How can yoga reduce criminal recidivism?
Does bilingualism increase intelligence?
The best advice I can offer about writing a good extended essay is pretty basic –
do the research. The more research you find, the more material you have to craft an
excellent question and construct a brilliant essay.
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(d)
Sources and Resources
Without a doubt the most common piece of advice that IBDP graduates give to new
IB students regarding the EE is - don’t procrastinate. With the multiple IAs you have to
complete for your regular subjects and the regular projects and assignments that you
have for your regular course work, many students put their EE off for too long and end
up having to rush through the process. If you want to write an excellent essay you need
to devote the time needed to conduct thorough research, write clear notes, craft your
research question, and engage in productive discussions with your supervisor.
It has already been mentioned but it bears repeating that no primary research is
to be conducted for your EE. This means that you definitely should not be conducting
your own experiments, interviews, surveys, etc., as part of your research.
You are encouraged to consult a range of credible sources of information. Websites
such as Psychology Today and the American Psychological Association are often
a good place to begin your wide reading and focusing your topic, as are general
psychology textbooks. They often summarize studies that might also provide more
information about your topic. The bulk of your EE, however, should be drawing on
research published in peer-reviewed journals.
You will enjoy the research
process a lot more if you
have chosen a topic you are
interested in. It’s hoped that
you may even experience the
thrill of academic discovery
as you find the answers to
interesting questions you pose
throughout the process.
4,000 words is about as
long as this chapter. It’s not
that much once you do the
research.
One tip for finding sources of relevant information is to read the references of
relevant articles that you find. If you find a peer-reviewed article that addresses your
topic, this same article will also reference other studies and articles that have explored
the same or a similar topic. This can help ignite a journey down a road of discovery!
When you are finding studies, reading the abstracts carefully can save you time
reading entire articles. The abstracts are designed to give you an overview of the article,
so you should read these carefully as you are conducting your research. For instance,
while the title of the article might sound really relevant, the abstract might suggest
it’s irrelevant and so you can skip it and keep searching. Or, if the abstract seems to
summarize what you’re looking for, you can make the choice to invest the time in
reading the full article. The introduction will also include a review of relevant literature,
and following the articles cited in the bibliography can also help your investigation.
Remember that there’s more to writing an excellent essay than simply how many
studies you find. There is also no magic number of studies that you need to include.
Your essay should present core arguments that you are presenting in relation to your
research question. Sometimes you may need to describe a study in a lot of detail in order
to contextualize your argument. Other times you may only need a one or two sentence
summary. As with writing other essays, you need to critically select the evidence you
include in your essay and think carefully about how you use that evidence.
Taking careful and thorough notes is especially important throughout the EE
process. You will need to provide references for all your sources. It’s far easier to keep
notes of your sources as you are taking notes than it is to try to go back later and trace
where you found your information.
There’s no secret formula to writing an excellent EE – it takes hard work and
thorough research. The more research you can gather, the easier the entire process
will be, from crafting a clear and concise question to structuring a well-developed
argument in response to that question. If 4,000 words might seem daunting to begin
with, once you’ve conducted thorough research you’ll find that the challenge won’t be
reaching the word limit, it will be trying to stay under it.
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You can reference textbooks
in your essay, but the bulk
of your research should be
coming from articles published
in peer-reviewed journal
articles. Many of these can
be found in full online using
Google Scholar. Your school
may also have access to
databases (e.g. Questia) that
can be useful for conducting
your research.
If you know what your central
argument and evidence are
before beginning, the final
product may be easier to
construct and will read more
coherently.
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Chapter 11: The Extended Essay
You can find more resources
for the EE on our blog,
including rubrics and tips for
writing the essay.
One hint for writing the final essay that might seem obvious is that you will
probably find it easier to start writing after you’ve conducted your research, gathered
the evidence and crafted your question. If you try to research and write the essay at the
same time, you might find that you’ll often get stuck and will need to delete or re-write
whole sections. Be sure to consult with your supervisor regularly, and check our blog
for new ideas and resources that will help you through the EE process.
If you’re conscientious, hard-working and reflective, the Extended Essay project
will be an exciting discovery of new ideas and concepts. Remember, many-a-little,
makes a mickle!
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