NEA Independent Investigation

Topic 22: The NEA — overview

Key ideas

• Format: a written report of 3,000–4,000 words, worth 70 marks (20% of the A-level). It is marked by your teachers and moderated by Pearson.
• Requirements:
  • It must be based on questions/hypotheses relating to any core or non-core content.
  • It must incorporate field data collected individually or in groups, plus your own research and secondary data.
  • You must independently contextualise, analyse and summarise your findings.
  • You must draw conclusions and present relevant data.
• Mark areas:
  • Purpose of the investigation: 12 marks.
  • Methods of field investigation: 10 marks.
  • Methods of data analysis: 24 marks.
  • Conclusions and evaluation: 24 marks.
• Human-geography NEA ideas:
  • perception surveys of regeneration;
  • environmental quality indices;
  • land-use mapping;
  • pedestrian counts;
  • interviews or questionnaires;
  • IMD and census data;
  • photo analysis;
  • analysis of social media or text.
• Example hypothesis: "Residents' perceptions of regeneration in [area] differ significantly with age." This can be tested with chi-squared using questionnaire data.
• Ethics: informed consent, anonymity, safety (risk assessment) and avoiding leading questions.
• Statistical tests: see the full worked examples for Spearman's rank, chi-squared and the t-test in the Physical Geography – Year 12 Notes (Topics 22–25).

Self-test

Q1: How many words and marks is the NEA worth? A: 3,000–4,000 words; 70 marks (20% of the A-level).

Q2: Suggest a human-geography hypothesis and a suitable statistical test. A: "There is a significant relationship between distance from the regeneration core and environmental-quality score." Test it with Spearman's rank correlation.

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