Explaining your findings with geographic concepts
Findings are not data
- Data is what you measured. A finding is what the data shows. Width at site 6 was 13.8 m is data. Channel width increases steadily downstream, rising more than sixfold over 10 km is a finding.
- A findings section that lists numbers has not started yet. The numbers belong in your table and your graphs; the text says what they add up to.
- Organise the findings by your sub-questions, one section each, in the order you wrote them. That is why the sub-questions were worth writing at the planning stage.
- The standard's word is explain, so each finding needs a cause. A report that describes six patterns and explains none is Achieved at best.
The three-part shape of a finding
- Every finding is built the same way: state it, support it, explain it.
- State the pattern in one sentence, in plain words.
- Support it with your own figures and a named figure number — see Figure 3.
- Explain it by naming the process that caused it.
- Worked shape, from the invented Waipuna Stream study: Channel width increases steadily downstream (Figure 3), from 2.1 m at site 1 to 13.8 m at site 6. This is because discharge increases as tributaries join, and a larger volume of water erodes the banks laterally.
- Quantify every statement you can. Much wider is a description; more than six times wider over 10 km is evidence.
- Compare variables against each other, not just against distance. Width, depth and velocity all rose while bedload size fell. Four variables moving in a coordinated way is far stronger evidence of one process than any single trend.
Incorporating geographic concepts
- The standard asks you to explain findings incorporating the relevance of geographic concepts. Incorporating means the concept sits inside the explanation, not in a paragraph of its own at the end.
- The seven concepts are environments, perspectives, processes, patterns, interaction, change and sustainability, and Level 2 usually adds location.
- Applying a concept is not defining one. A definition describes the concept; an application describes your study area. Only the second lifts a grade.
- Use the three-part sentence: name the concept, name the specific thing in your study that shows it, then say what follows from it.
- Which concepts fit a fieldwork report:
- Patterns — your trend is a spatial pattern, describable in one sentence.
- Processes — the sequence that produced it: erosion, deposition, urbanisation.
- Interaction — two things affecting each other, and in which direction.
- Change — anything your secondary source lets you say about time.
- Perspectives — what your questionnaire respondents believe, and why it is reasonable to them.
- Sustainability — only if your data actually speaks to whether something can continue.
- One concept applied properly beats four named in passing, and a test for every concept sentence: if it would still be true pasted into a report about a different place, it says nothing about yours.
Anomalies, and the secondary source
- An anomaly is a finding, not an embarrassment. A point off the trend is the most interesting thing in your data, and explaining one is worth more than another confirming point.
- Say which reading is anomalous, by how much, and what your other data suggests caused it. At site 4 the invented Waipuna width sat about 2 m above the trend, and the annotated photograph and précis sketch show a gravel bar splitting the channel — deposition widening a braided section, not extra discharge.
- Never delete an anomaly. A quietly removed point is the difference between research and decoration, and the gap is visible in your raw table anyway.
- Use your secondary source to place your day in a longer frame. The council's flood record shows the catchment has exceeded its bank-full level nine times in twenty years, so the low flow I measured is not the condition the channel was shaped by.
- Say when your data and your secondary source disagree. A disagreement you name is evidence of judgement; one you hide is a hole a marker will find.
What in detail and integrated look like
- Achieved states the findings and gives a simple explanation using a concept.
- Merit explains in detail — specific figures, named sites, the process spelt out step by step, and the concept applied to your own study area rather than defined.
- Excellence integrates: concept, evidence and explanation arrive in the same sentences, and the findings connect to each other rather than sitting in separate boxes. A Merit findings section explains each sub-question well; an Excellence one shows that the answers to three of them are one process seen three ways.
Worked Example
Worked example
A student writes this in their findings for the invented Waipuna Stream study:
Site 1 width was 2.1 m. Site 2 was 3.4 m. Site 3 was 5.6 m. Site 4 was 7.2 m. Site 5 was 10.4 m. Site 6 was 13.8 m. This shows the river gets bigger. Geographic concepts: change, process, pattern.
Rewrite it as a Merit-level finding.
Answer:
Step 1 — move the numbers out of the sentence and into the figure. Six readings listed in prose is a table read aloud. The graph already holds them, so the text should point at it: (Figure 3).
Step 2 — state the finding as a claim. The river gets bigger is vague and does not say in which direction the change runs. Replaced with: Channel width increases steadily with distance downstream, from 2.1 m at site 1 in the foothills to 13.8 m at site 6 at the tidal limit — more than a sixfold increase over 10 km (Figure 3).
Step 3 — add the explanation, because the standard says explain. This is because discharge increases downstream as the two tributaries between sites 2 and 4 join the main channel. A greater volume of water has more energy, so it erodes the banks laterally and the channel widens to carry it.
Step 4 — support the explanation with a second variable rather than repeating the first. Mean velocity rose over the same distance from 0.28 to 0.59 m per second, while mean bedload size fell from 68 mm to 12 mm (Figures 4 and 5). Faster water and finer bed material point at the same cause: more discharge, carrying more energy and finer material further.
Step 5 — replace the list of concept words with one applied concept. Change, process, pattern names three and applies none. Replaced with: The concept of process is shown here because the widening is the outcome of a sequence — tributaries add discharge, greater discharge erodes the banks laterally, and the eroded material is carried further before it is deposited. Every variable changes in the same direction with distance, which is what distinguishes a process-driven pattern from random variation between sites.
Step 6 — name the anomaly rather than smoothing it. Site 4 sits about 2 m above the trend line. Figure 6 and the précis sketch show a gravel bar splitting the channel there, so the extra width is deposition in a braided section rather than additional discharge.