The IB's official Psychology curriculum update explicitly identifies the May 2027 change and describes four practical-method contexts: interviews for health and well-being, observation for human development, questionnaires for human relationships, and experiments for learning and cognition. The public course summary gives minimum sample sizes for class practicals, which must not be confused automatically with a universal research-proposal sample-size rule. Your school should use the 2027 subject guide and teacher instructions to confirm exactly what the IA requires.
One question, changed four times
Start with the broad idea: "Social media harms teenagers." As written, this presumes harm, leaves "social media" undefined and treats a diverse population as homogeneous. It is not an appropriate research question.
Try: "Do students feel worse after using their phones?" This is still vague, invites recall bias and blends many possible causes.
Next: "How do 16–18-year-old students at a consenting school describe the role of notification interruptions when trying to study?" This is narrower and genuinely exploratory, but it may collect personally sensitive experiences if the interview asks about distress or mental health.
Finally, scope the teaching example as: "How do volunteer students aged 16–18 describe their strategies for responding to notifications during a typical homework session?" It is framed as a descriptive interview study, not a causal test of academic results or mental health.
An example of a genuine proposal decision matrix
| Design choice | Proposed approach | Why it fits | What remains uncertain |
|---|---|---|---|
| Population | Volunteers aged 16–18 from one school, with appropriate permissions | Matches the local behaviour question | Cannot generalize to all IB students |
| Method | Short semi-structured interviews | Allows explanation of strategies and context | Social-desirability and recall biases |
| Main prompt | "Describe a recent time when a notification interrupted homework." | Asks about an event rather than asserting harm | Some participants may not recall a specific episode |
| Follow-up | "What did you do next, and why?" | Explores a coping strategy | Respondents may rationalize past actions |
| Analysis | Transparent coding of interruption, response and perceived trade-off | Fits qualitative accounts | Coding differences between researchers |
| Ethical plan | Voluntary consent/assent where required, anonymity plan, withdrawal procedure | Minimizes coercion and unnecessary personal data | School/institutional rules must be checked |
This is an original example research plan, not a claim that the IB has approved the question or that a real study was conducted. A school research supervisor may require different safeguards or prohibit this population or setting.
An interview tool you can actually critique
For the fictional notification-strategy proposal, the following five example prompts form a concrete draft data-collection tool, not transcripts, results, official IB question wording or permission to interview classmates. An actual student's tool must be justified against their own question, ethical review and the current subject guide.
| Interview prompt | Why ask it? | Bias or ethical risk to check |
|---|---|---|
| "Walk me through the last homework session you remember clearly." | Establishes the event before mentioning notifications | Recall may be selective; avoid collecting identifying details |
| "What kinds of interruptions, if any, happened during that session?" | Leaves room for no interruption | May still prime the person to exaggerate disruptions |
| "What did you do when a notification arrived, if one did?" | Focuses on a concrete observed/remembered response | Avoid implying that not replying was the correct choice |
| "What influenced that decision at the time?" | Explores contextual trade-offs | Respect the option to skip personal/family details |
| "Is there anything about that session this set of questions missed?" | Invites a disconfirming or unexpected explanation | Avoid steering the answer toward an expected narrative |
Worked design decision: The opening question deliberately avoids the word distraction. The proposal should justify this choice: using "How badly did notifications distract you?" would assume the effect it purports to study. If an early pilot of the interview guide makes volunteers talk only about exam anxiety, revise the prompts before collecting your actual investigation data, disclose the revision, and do not invent pilot observations. The proposed qualitative codes below are hypotheses about how answers might be organized, not findings.
What a finished analysis plan looks like before any data exist
You could predefine three descriptive codes:
Interruption noticed: a participant describes attending to a notification during work. Deliberate delay: they describe choosing to postpone a response. Contextual trade-off: they explain a competing obligation, such as a family message. A codebook would include a definition and a disconfirming example for each code, not just memorable quotations that seem to fit your hypothesis.
The proposal should say how recordings or notes would be managed, who could access them, what counts as withdrawal, and how identifiable material would be removed. Avoid harvesting classmates' activity logs, screen-time histories or private messages simply because they would be "more objective." Ethical suitability is part of deciding whether a question is worth studying.
Do not use 2026 instructions for a 2027 IA
The IB's 2026 examiner instructions describe the older experimental investigation using an independent and dependent variable, descriptive and inferential statistics, and a report of findings. Those instructions may be appropriate to a student in the earlier assessment cycle. They are not interchangeable with the redesigned May 2027 research-proposal task. An article that tells every current Psychology student to replicate an experiment is therefore unsafe without checking the assessment session.
Before writing your final proposal, verify the applicable 2027 rubric, permitted methods, required population details and documentation with your teacher. The worked matrix above gives a research design that can be critiqued; it deliberately does not invent scores or participant data.
Original IB sources
- Official Psychology updates and 2027 research-proposal model: https://www-prod.ibo.org/university-admission/latest-curriculum-updates/psychology-updates/
- Historical 2026 examiner instructions for the previous experimental IA (do not transfer to 2027): https://ibpublishing.ibo.org/exinst/apps/exinst/index.html?chapter=9&doc=EX_instructions_2026_e&part=10
This article distinguishes the official curriculum facts from the proposed interview-design teaching example. No research was actually conducted. For draft review, visit ibacalao.com.
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