Your Fieldwork Approach for 2028: Transects and Place
This lesson explains the methodology and conceptual framework the exam board has named for your exam year. The specific sites, data and results your class collected are different for every school — for the case study you write about in the exam, use your own fieldwork notes and data, applied through the lens taught here.
Why This Lesson Is Different
The exam board does not test every possible fieldwork approach every year. Instead, they name one methodological approach from Table A and one conceptual framework from Table B, at least two years before the exam. For the 2028 series, the exam board has named Use of transects as the methodology and Place as the conceptual framework. Part A of the fieldwork paper is set on transects; Part B is set on place. You do not need to revise any other pair — this lesson covers only the one that applies to you.
For the 2028 exam series, Part A of the fieldwork paper is built around Use of transects and Part B is built around Place. These are the only methodology and framework you need for this exam.
Use of Transects: This Year’s Methodology
A transect is a line drawn across a feature, with data collected at points along its length. The specification lists five kinds of enquiry that use this methodology.
- Assessing quality of life or environmental quality across an urban area.
- Analysing micro-climate across a large town or up a slope.
- Determining patterns of flow and deposition across a river channel.
- Analysing patterns of vegetation across a sand dune system or through woodland.
- Analysing slope profiles and sediment sorting up a beach profile.
Points along a transect are usually chosen using systematic sampling. A wide interval covers more distance but risks missing where the biggest change happens; a narrow interval is more detailed but takes longer to collect.
Before going out, you choose the line itself — for example from the top of a slope to the bottom, or from the back of a beach to the water’s edge. You decide the sampling interval and set up control points: fixed locations or repeated conditions that let you check whether an unusual reading is caused by the feature you are studying, or by something else, such as recent rain or an eroded footpath. Equipment must suit the variable — a clinometer for slope angle, a quadrat for vegetation cover, a tape measure for pebble size.
Transect results are best presented as a cross-section (for a beach or slope profile) or as located graphs plotted along a base line, such as bar charts of vegetation cover at each point on a dune transect. The main limitation of any transect is that a single line only samples one path across a feature — it may not represent the whole feature, and results can be affected by the accuracy of your measuring and by the weather on the day.
Place: This Year’s Conceptual Framework
The conceptual framework place is about what makes a location unique. You explore this by comparing and contrasting two distinctive locations rather than studying one location on its own. The specification lists five kinds of place enquiry.
- Comparing the characteristics of coastal features in two locations.
- Comparing the characteristics of river features in two locations.
- Comparing the characteristics of an ecosystem in two locations.
- Comparing two villages or two urban environments.
- Comparing quality of life in two neighbourhoods.
A place enquiry starts by choosing two contrasting locations — for example two stretches of coastline with different geology, or two neighbourhoods with different housing types. You then collect the same kind of evidence in both locations so the comparison is fair: the same measurements, the same survey questions, at a similar time of day.
Evidence for a place enquiry is often a mix of quantitative and qualitative data. Quantitative data might be housing density counts or measured beach gradient; qualitative data might come from questionnaires, or a bi-polar survey scoring each location from run-down to well-kept, plus annotated photographs of distinctive features. Your conclusion should link the differences you found back to what makes each place unique.
Writing About Your Own Fieldwork
In the exam, Part A questions will ask about a transect enquiry and Part B questions will ask about a place enquiry — sometimes using an unfamiliar example, sometimes asking you to draw on the enquiry your class carried out. Use the six-stage enquiry process you have already learned — posing questions, collecting evidence, processing and presenting, analysing, concluding, evaluating — but apply it specifically to a line of data points for transects and to two contrasting locations for place.
Whether you write about a transect or a place enquiry, the specification requires the same evaluative language: comment on the accuracy of your measurements, the reliability of your sample size and repeat readings, and any possible bias — for instance a transect walked only in good weather, or two locations compared using different observers.
Other exam years use different pairs — for example 2027 combines change over time with sphere of influence, and 2029 combines geographical flows with inequality — but none of that applies to you. For the 2028 series, only transects and place are examined, so that is all you need to revise.