The big idea: An investigative study of an aspect of the religious experience, practice or belief of a group and/or individual adherents.
1,500–1,800 words, 30 marks, 25% of your grade, 20 teaching hours. Unchanged by the 2017 amendments.
What the focus may be
- A visit to a sacred place, building or museum
- A study of artefacts
- Attendance at an act of worship
- An interview, or interviews, with religious adherents
- A study using a range of sources
Any religion at all: The guide is explicit: the focus does not have to be one of the nine world religions in the core syllabus.
A local community, a tradition your family belongs to, a movement nobody in your class has studied — all are allowed, provided the academic work is there.
The sentence most students skim: "It is important to emphasize that this is an academic exercise, which requires preliminary research."
A study built on a single visit and no reading cannot score in criterion A, which is worth 8 of the 30 marks.
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Eight marks, the second largest criterion, and almost all of it is earned before any fieldwork happens.
The five criteria drawn to scale. A and B are what this micro is about; C, D and E are dimmed.
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What criterion A asks for, in order
A rationale for the choice of topic
Why this study, and why it is worth doing. "I am interested in it" is not a rationale; "this practice is described very differently by its adherents and by the local press" is.
A focus formulated as a question
Not a title, not a topic — a question. The whole study is then either an answer to it or evidence about it.
A range of sources outlined AND justified
Listing the sources gets you part way. Saying why each one can tell you what you are asking it is what the criterion actually names.
Supporting evidence selected and analysed
Show how the preliminary reading informs the study — what it led you to expect, and what it left open for the fieldwork to settle.
Why this, asked as a question, with sources that can answer it.
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Three marks, and everything hangs on them: Criterion B is the smallest criterion in the IA — and the research question it assesses is what criteria C and D are then marked against.
A loose question costs you far more than its three marks.
Too broad — cannot be answered
- "What is the role of women in religion?"
- "Why do people go on pilgrimage?"
- "How important is prayer?"
- Nothing you could observe would settle any of these
Narrowly focused — can be answered
- "How do members of one local congregation describe what their weekly shared meal does for the community?"
- "What do three adherents at one shrine say they came for, and how far does that match what the tradition's texts say it is for?"
- Each names who, where, and what evidence would count
The scope-and-plan test: Criterion B also wants the relationship between the question and the plan.
Write the question, then write the plan, then read them side by side and ask: does this plan collect exactly what this question needs — no more, and nothing missing?
How this is tested. Criteria A and B are worth 11 of 30 together, and they are the two you can complete before anyone else is involved.
Week 1 — read
- Preliminary research on the tradition and the practice
- Note which sources are primary and which secondary
- Write down what you expect to find
Week 2 — narrow
- Turn the topic into a question with a who and a where
- Draft the scope: what is in, what is out
- Check the plan collects what the question needs
Week 3 — arrange
- Make contact, and ask permission properly
- Prepare interview questions in advance
- Decide how you will record what you see and hear
Appendices do not count: Titles, citations, references and appendices are excluded from the word count.
So the questions you asked at interview belong in an appendix, where they cost nothing and still show the examiner how the study was built.