Introductory techniques

Students start by using techniques such as field sketching or a walkability survey to collect qualitative and quantitative data about a place. This not only gives them the opportunity to observe the place closely, but also gives them data to inform an EQA.

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An EQA uses a student’s judgement to assess environmental quality against a range of indicators. They work on a sliding scale of quality (like 1 to 5) to represent less good to good, like the example below. The categories can be pre-determined by the teacher or students could offer suggestions for what should be measured. They could also calculate a total overall score to give an aggregate for each location.

Questions:

• Why do you think the EQA has 5 categories?

Encourage pupils to think about what would happen if there were only 3 categories or ten. 3 categories would be hard to distinguish between, while ten would provide variation, but it would be difficult to distinguish between, for example a 7 and an 8.

• What does a 1 look like? What does a 5 look like?

Encourage pupils together to point out what extremes for each category might look like i.e. what does a 1 look like for ‘Lots of litter’? What about a 5? As the EQA is based on personal judgements and is subjective, this activity enables benchmarking the scoring between different observers to help to reduce this subjectivity.

The Environmental Quality Assessment

Students visit various locations and carry out an EQA at each one. For each indicator they mark their score for the location.

Questions:

• Where are you going to carry out your EQA?

The field sketch or walkability survey could allow students to make an overall judgement of the area and complete the EQA as a summary. Alternatively, they could compare two or more contrasting locations within a small area. This is an opportunity to discuss sampling strategies with pupils as these areas could be selected using random, systematic or stratified sampling.

• How many locations are enough?

This depends a bit on the purpose of the enquiry. It may be that one overall summary of the environmental quality in an area is enough. However, if the enquiry involves comparing two areas, for example a high street and a shopping centre, then at least two EQAs will need to be carried out.

Consideration:

• Be careful about making sweeping judgements about the quality of places, as students’ experiences might differ. For example, don’t say ‘look at this horrible housing’, as your students might think that, compared to where they live, it looks quite nice.

Data presentation

Environmental quality data can be presented through simple radar graphs or proportional circles.

Start to introduce evaluative concepts such as reliability – would similar results be produced if someone else followed your method? – and representativeness – does your sample accurately reflect the area you are studying?

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The Geographical Association (GA) has worked closely with the Field Studies Council (FSC) to develop these resources.