Human Fieldwork: Urban & Rural Settlements
This lesson covers the general fieldwork skills, terminology, and exam-paper expectations that apply to every student. The specific sites, data, and methods your class actually used will be different — for the case study you’ll write about in the exam, refer to your teacher’s notes and the data you collected on the day.
Two Choices, Same Skill Set
Edexcel asks every student to carry out a second investigation in a human environment. You either looked at change in a central or inner urban area — the kind of place that shifts from week to week as shops close, flats are built and footfall changes — or you looked at change in rural settlements, where the question is more about counter-urbanisation, second homes, or thinning bus services. The skills are the same: ask a focused question, choose appropriate methods, collect data fairly, present and analyse it, then reflect on what went wrong.
For human fieldwork Edexcel requires at least one quantitative method, one qualitative method and at least two secondary sources, including Census data from the Office for National Statistics.
Option 7B: Central or Inner Urban Areas
A typical urban question is ‘How is the central business district changing?’ or ‘How does environmental quality vary across the inner urban area?’ Two methods cover the brief.
First, a quantitative land-use survey: walking each street and ticking off whether a building is comparison retail (e.g. clothes), convenience retail (e.g. supermarket), services (e.g. hairdresser), leisure or vacant. Compared with old maps or business directories, this shows how the area has changed — for example, the rise of independent coffee shops or the loss of department stores. Second, a qualitative environmental quality survey (EQS), where the same set of scores (1–5) is recorded at sample sites — usually for litter, noise, graffiti, building condition and green space. Bipolar scales (e.g. clean ↔ dirty) reduce, but do not remove, observer bias.
Subjective judgement is the EQS’s big weakness: one student scores rust on a railing as a 2, another scores it as a 4. Three fixes work in practice. Calibration — the whole class scores one site together before splitting up, agreeing what a 3 looks like. Triple sampling — three students score the same site and the mean is taken. Photo logging — every score is paired with a photograph so judgements can be re-checked later. Name a fix in your evaluation rather than only pointing out the bias.
Option 7B: Rural Settlements
If your school chose a rural settlement, the broad task is to investigate change. A typical question is ‘How is village A changing because of counter-urbanisation?’ Edexcel requires one quantitative method to measure flows of people within the settlement — usually pedestrian counts at four or five points (junctions, the bus stop, the village shop) for a fixed period (e.g. 10 minutes), repeated at different times of day. Counts can be displayed on flow lines on a map of the village.
The required qualitative method records the views of people on the quality of the rural environment — typically a questionnaire with both closed (tick-box) and open (free-text) questions, or recorded interviews with residents, second-home owners and shopkeepers. Open responses give context that numbers cannot — one resident’s comment that ‘the new estate killed the village pub’ tells you more about change than a footfall figure.
Sampling Real People
Sampling matters even more in human fieldwork because people are far less uniform than rocks. Random sampling means choosing people by chance, so everyone has the same chance of being asked; systematic sampling means using a fixed rule, such as stopping every fifth passer-by or surveying at set sites; stratified sampling deliberately balances ages, genders and tourists vs locals so the sample reflects the village as a whole. Sample size matters too: 50 questionnaires give a much more reliable picture than 10. The exam often shows you a small sample and asks how reliability could be improved — the obvious answers are ‘more questionnaires’ and ‘sample on different days/times’.
Required Secondary Sources
For both options Edexcel requires Census data from the ONS as one secondary source. The Census is taken every 10 years (most recently in 2021) and gives age structure, ethnicity, occupation, housing tenure and tens of other variables for every tiny output area. The second source can be chosen by the school: an old map showing land use 50 years ago; ONS Neighbourhood Statistics for a rural parish; police crime data; or estate agent data on house prices. Always state the source and date in the analysis.
Stopping members of the public requires care. Approach in pairs, in a public place, in daylight; introduce yourself, give a name and the school; explain the survey is anonymous; never ask under-16s without an adult present. People can refuse, and you must record refusals as a non-response — it affects sample size. Photographing people, especially children, is not allowed without permission. These rules protect both you and your respondents, and a strong evaluation will mention them.
Reliability of EQS scores improves through calibration before fieldwork, triple-sampling at each site, photo logging, and increasing sample size. In the exam, name a specific fix rather than only pointing out the bias.