The IA (internal assessment) is basically a historical report that investigates a topic that we learned in our class. It is a pretty important factor in your overall grade for IB because it is approximately 20% for HL students. Not a big percentage right? Well yeah, but the IA is still very important because it can either boost your grade extremely or not…. I think we all want to boost our overall grade so aiming for the best grade on the IA is very important. Hence this article! Let’s explore the ins and outs of the IB history HL IA.
Picking a subject:
The first tip to developing a good IA is to find a subject that you're interested in and that you ACTUALLY want to explore more of. This is very important to focus on because the more you actually like the content, the more you will want to actually do better on researching. The passion you find for the subject will likely cause you to take more creative approaches, making your IA stand out even more. This was the hardest part for me. I am not a big history fan, so finding a topic that I liked was so hard.
You may also experience this difficulty, but don’t worry! There are tons of topics in history. Some include The Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement, Authoritarian States, etc. For my IA, I chose one war that really interested me at the time, the Korean War, and honestly, if I could go back again I would do my IA on authoritarian leaders like Castro. If you don’t know what topics you want to explore, I suggest using AI to give inspiration. This also means being diligent and wise with your use of AI. Ai can give you ideas on what you want to explore when you finally know what you want to investigate.
Here is an example topic: The role of economic factors in the fall of the Qing Dynasty.
Create your research question:
This is probably the MOST important step. We want our questions to be clear, focused, and specific. When you finally find the topic you're interested in, this will help guide you in developing your question. You will want to find areas in your topic that have debates or differing interpretations; this will lead to your question. Next, you’ll want to narrow it down by finding a specific angle that you want to investigate. Lastly, finalize your question by putting it into a format. I based my question on past paper examples because they have a common format. For example: To what extent was (event) caused by (something)? Not all questions have to be in “to what extent…” format. Here are a few questions:
These past IAs are from a very useful website that I have used throughout my IB career. Using inspiration from these papers can help develop your own. There is nothing wrong with using inspiration, but it is best to be careful so you don’t plagiarize. For our example topic, our research question can look like this: “To what extent did economic factors contribute to the fall of the Qing Dynasty?”
Research Time:
Now is the most important step. (I know, I already said that, but every step is really important.) This is where you will be finding sources to defend your claim on the question you created. I recommended the website, JSTOR, as it provides academic sources, both primary and secondary sources. It was very useful and all of the sources that I used in my IA came from this site. Of course, this doesn’t mean you can’t just google evidence on Google from non-academic sources, but it is better to find and use academic sources. Additionally, if your school doesn’t have access to JSTOR, Google Scholar is also really good and can provide academic sources, however, there are chances where it can give less credible sources too, so be careful with Google Scholar. This section will take the longest time, so utilize your teachers to the fullest. I promise it can and will go a lot smoother if you ask your teachers for help and guidance. Also, have grace with yourselves because researching is not easy for everyone.
Outline and Writing:
The outline needs to be detailed and structured. It will help you organize your research to ensure a nice flow. Everyone knows the basic outline: intro, body 1,2 &3, and conclusion. The history IA should be pretty similar except the bodies won't be like an English IA. The intro will consist of your research question, a quick analysis of your sources’ values and limitations, background information, and then your thesis as the last sentence. From there are your “body paragraphs” where you expand on your thesis. This is what it’ll look like:
Let’s say our thesis is: “Economic factors were crucial in the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1912, as rampant corruption, fiscal mismanagement, and the failure to modernize the economy caused the dynasty’s stability to waver and began to erode public support, leading to a revolutionary movement.” The first paragraph would be to prove the section about “rampant corruption” leading to the fall. Similarly, the other paragraphs would be about fiscal mismanagement and failure to modernize and its correlation. Then you finish with a reflection and conclusion. In a reflection, you’ll discuss your methods of research and their effectiveness. Then you’ll reflect on the challenges and the solutions you created, as well as the limitations of your sources. Lastly, the conclusion would be a summary of your investigation, defining and explaining the significance of the investigation and directly answering your research question.
Finalizing:
The last and biggest thing is to finalize your paper. This step needs you to peer review like your life depends on it. I would suggest peer review at least four times if you have the time. Even ask your teachers to review your essay. Remember though that your teacher only has one chance to look at and review your paper, so utilizing other students is very important. The BIGGEST thing is to check your citations and make sure your formatting aligns with your chosen format, if not this can lead to your accidentally getting flagged as plagiarism, and we don’t want that.
When you finally go through these basic steps and reach the end, your essay will be on its way to IB to be graded! Now you’ll have one less thing out of the way. Following these steps will allow you to create a pretty structured and compelling history IA that meets IB’s criteria!
