Choosing an event and its effects
The two-question test for an event
- Question one: is it significant? Use the standard's five measures — importance to people at the time, depth of impact, number of lives affected, duration, and ongoing effects.
- Question two: can I name a New Zealand institution, group or figure that changed, and date it? This is the AS91234-specific test and the one that decides the grade ceiling.
- An event can pass the first and fail the second. The reports name world-historical events that candidates could not connect here with enough precision to analyse.
- If it fails question two, the event is not wrong — it is wrong for this paper. AS91233 has no New Zealand requirement, so allocate it there.
Where New Zealand effects usually live
- Legislation and policy. An Act passed, a scheme established, a department created. Datable, nameable, and often measurable.
- Organisations. Associations, unions, leagues, societies, church bodies — founded in response, or changed by it.
- Numbers that moved. Employment, prices, exports, enrolments, membership, migration. A number with a date is the strongest single piece of evidence available at this level.
- Groups whose position changed. A trade, a region, an iwi, a profession, an age group, women, returned servicemen.
- Public argument. What newspapers, politicians and organisations began or stopped saying — evidenced by what was published, not by what people presumably thought.
- Look for effects in at least two of these five. Two effects drawn from the same category tend to be the same effect twice.
Separating your two effects on more than one axis
- Axis one — timeframe. Short-term versus long-term. 2023's question forced this split, so a pair that does not have it is exposed.
- Axis two — domain. Social, political, economic. 2024's question named all three, so a pair that does not have it is exposed too.
- Axis three — who. Different individuals, groups or communities, and ideally in different directions. An effect that helped one group and harmed another carries its own analysis.
- Aim for two effects separated on all three. It is usually achievable, and it makes the essay immune to whichever version of the question appears.
- Check by deletion: remove one effect and ask what is lost. If the answer is "detail", they are one effect. If it is "a whole dimension", they are two.
Establishing that the effect depends on the event
- Following is not depending. The same test that governs AS91233 consequences governs AS91234 effects.
- Narrow the window. An effect within a year has far fewer rival explanations than one across a decade.
- Find a contemporary attribution. A statute's preamble, an organisation's founding statement, a minister's stated reason, a newspaper's editorial explanation. One such item does more than a paragraph of reasoning.
- Use the failed-before test. If something had been proposed and refused before the event and was adopted after it, the event is the variable that changed. This is the strongest form of argument available in an 800-word essay.
- If the change was already under way, change the verb. The event accelerated it, broadened it, or made it national. That claim is usually better evidenced than caused, because the earlier trend is itself documented.
Continuity and change, which the Excellence descriptor names
- 2025's Excellence descriptor names continuity and change explicitly as a historical fundamental the best candidates used.
- Change is what your two effects are. Continuity is what did not move, and naming it makes the change measurable.
- A one-clause version: while [X] changed within two years, [Y] remained as it had been for another two decades — which shows the effect had limits, and limits are what distinguish a judgement from a claim.
- Continuity also protects against overclaiming. An essay in which an event changed everything is less convincing than one that says precisely what it did not change.
Worked Example
Worked example
A student has an event and has listed five possible effects on New Zealand society. Choose two, and justify the choice.
- 1: A government department was created two years later.
- 2: Public opinion on the issue shifted over the following twenty years.
- 3: Employment in one industry fell sharply within eighteen months.
- 4: A national association was founded within six months and still exists.
- 5: New legislation was passed three years later, and the department in 1 administered it.
Answer:
Step 1 — remove the ones that fail dependency.
Effect 2 fails. Twenty years admits too many rival explanations, and public opinion shifted has no document behind it unless polling or a measurable proxy exists. Drop it, or rescue it by narrowing the window and naming the evidence.
Step 2 — remove stacked effects.
Effects 1 and 5 are stacked. The legislation is administered by the department, so using both gives one link from the event and one from the department. Keep whichever is better evidenced and drop the other.
Step 3 — the survivors are 3, 4 and one of 1 or 5. Now separate on the three axes.
- Effect 3 — economic, short-term (eighteen months), affecting one industry and its region. Quantifiable.
- Effect 4 — social, immediate then long-term (six months, still existing), affecting the people who organised. Documented by the organisation itself.
- Effect 1 or 5 — political, medium to long-term, affecting everyone in its scope.
Step 4 — choose the pair furthest apart. Effects 3 and 1 (or 5) give economic versus political, short-term versus long-term, one industry versus the whole country. All three axes. Effects 3 and 4 give economic versus social and short versus long, but both affect relatively narrow groups — two axes, not three.
Step 5 — check the evidence for each pair member. For 3: the industry, the region, the percentage fall, the period. For 1 or 5: the name, the date, the stated purpose, and one thing it did. Four items each.
Step 6 — add the continuity clause. While employment in the sector fell within eighteen months, the ownership pattern of the industry was unchanged for another decade — one clause, and it shows the effect had a boundary.