Section 1: the inquiry question

How to choose and refine an inquiry question for the historical investigation, with weak and strong questions from different periods and regions, the link to a historical concept, and an annotated sample Section 1.

IB History
Internal assessment
SL and HL

14 min readLast reviewed 16 Oct 2026

Everything in the historical investigation depends on the question. A good inquiry question decides which sources are worth reading, gives Section 3 a structure, and makes a clear answer possible in about 2,200 words. Section 1 states the question and explains how you arrived at it, and it is reported to carry 6 of the 24 marks.

What makes a good inquiry question

Teachers and moderators look for the same qualities in a question, whatever its period. The table sets them out with a test you can apply to your own draft.

Quality	What it means	Test your question
Focused	Limited by place, people, period and the aspect being investigated	Could you name the start and end dates and the group or place it covers?
Debatable	Sources and historians could support different answers	Can you write two different, defensible one-sentence answers?
Answerable	Enough accessible evidence exists, in a language you read, to answer it with seven sources	Can you list at least five suitable sources now?
Historical	About the past, judged with evidence from and about the period	Is it about what happened and why, not what should happen or what might have happened?
Concept-linked	Uses cause and consequence, continuity and change, perspectives or significance	Which concept does the question's wording use?
Right-sized	Neither so narrow that it is settled in a paragraph, nor so wide that 2,200 words only skim it	Could you outline three or four Section 3 paragraphs?

From interest to question

Few strong questions arrive fully formed. Most start as an interest (a period, a person, a place, a family story), become a topic after some background reading, and only then become a question. The question changes again once you read sources, because the sources show what can and cannot be answered. The diagram of the steps from interest to question follows one student's path.

Four boxes joined by arrows from left to right: an interest (samurai in Meiji Japan), a topic (the Satsuma Rebellion, 1877), a working question (why did the Satsuma Rebellion happen?) and a refined question (to what extent was the abolition of samurai privileges in 1876 the main cause of the… — From interest to inquiry question. Reading turns an interest into a topic; asking turns the topic into a working question; testing it against the sources turns that into a refined question that names one factor to weigh against others. Each step is part of the story Section 1 tells.

In this example the student began with a general interest in the samurai and the end of their status in Meiji Japan. Background reading led to the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877, the last and largest armed rising of former samurai against the new government, led by Saigō Takamori. The first question, "Why did the Satsuma Rebellion happen?", was a reasonable start but too open: it invited a list of causes. Reading further showed that historians weigh the government's attack on samurai privileges in 1876 (the ban on wearing swords and the compulsory conversion of hereditary stipends into government bonds) against Saigō's defeat over the plan to invade Korea in 1873 and local Satsuma politics. That debate gave the refined question one factor to test against the others.

Refine a working question. A student's working question is "How did the Cultural Revolution affect China?" Refine it into a question suitable for the investigation, and explain each change.

Show the worked example

Step 1: diagnose the problem. The question covers a decade (1966–1976) and a country of more than 700 million people, and "affect" invites a list of effects. Seven sources cannot answer it.

Step 2: narrow the focus. Choose one group, place or aspect where sources exist in English: for example the "sent-down" youth, the millions of urban secondary school students sent to the countryside from 1968. Many later wrote memoirs, and historians have studied the programme.

Step 3: add a concept and a debate. Significance and perspective both fit. Was the sending-down programme mainly a way to end the violence of the Red Guards in the cities, or an ideological project to re-educate youth through rural labour? The two answers rest on different evidence (official statements versus the timing of the decision and later memoirs).

Step 4: set the dates. The mass campaign began after Mao's call of December 1968 and wound down after 1976. Limiting the question to 1968–1971 keeps it to the decision and its first phase.

Refined question. To what extent was the need to end Red Guard violence in the cities the main reason for the mass sending-down of urban youth to the countryside in 1968–1971? It is focused, debatable, linked to cause and consequence, and the perspectives of government statements, sent-down youth and historians can all be weighed.

Weak and strong questions

The table gives examples of common weaknesses, each with a stronger version from a different period and region. The strong questions are illustrations to show the method, not ready-made titles: each would still need checking against the sources available to you.

Weak question	Problem	Stronger question	Concept
What happened at the Battle of Agincourt?	Descriptive; one factual answer	How significant was the victory at Agincourt (1415) in enabling Henry V's conquest of Normandy in 1417–1419?	Significance
Was Mansa Musa the richest person who ever lived?	Unanswerable and presentist: wealth across centuries cannot be compared from the sources	How significant was Mansa Musa's pilgrimage to Mecca (1324–1325) in making Mali known in the Mediterranean world by c. 1375?	Significance; perspectives
How did the Soviet Union treat women?	Far too broad: seventy years, a huge state, no focus	How far did the Family Codes of 1918 and 1926 change the legal position of women in Soviet Russia?	Continuity and change
Was Allende overthrown by the CIA?	Yes/no wording invites a one-sided answer	To what extent was United States policy the main reason for the overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile in September 1973?	Cause and consequence
What if Britain had not partitioned India?	Counterfactual: the answer cannot be tested with evidence	To what extent were the decisions of the Boundary Commission responsible for the scale of violence in Punjab in August–September 1947?	Cause and consequence
Was Mao a good leader?	A moral verdict, not a historical question; no limits	How significant was the Lushan Conference (July–August 1959) in prolonging the Great Leap Forward?	Significance
What will be the long-term effects of the Arab Spring?	About the future; consequences still unfolding	To what extent was social media the main cause of the fall of Ben Ali in Tunisia in January 2011?	Cause and consequence
How useful are oral histories?	About method in general, with no historical focus	How do the perspectives of former Red Guards in later memoirs differ from official accounts of the Red Guard movement in 1966–1968?	Perspectives

Question stems and the concepts they use

The command phrase at the start of a question usually shows which concept it uses. Evaluative stems are the safest, because they require a judgement, and a judgement gives Section 3 its argument.

Stem	Concept it usually uses	Example
To what extent was … the main cause of …?	Cause and consequence	To what extent was the Afrikaans Medium Decree the main cause of the Soweto uprising of June 1976?
How far did … change …?	Continuity and change	How far did the Meiji land tax reform of 1873 change the burden of taxation on peasants?
How significant was … in/for …?	Significance	How significant was the Montgomery bus boycott (1955–1956) for the growth of the civil rights movement?
How successful was … in …?	Cause and consequence; significance	How successful was the Marshall Plan in limiting support for the Communist Party in Italy, 1948–1952?
How and why do accounts of … differ?	Perspectives	How and why do Mexican and United States accounts of the outbreak of the war of 1846 differ?

Testing the question against the sources

A question is only as good as the evidence that can answer it. Before you commit, list the sources you could use and the perspective each gives. If the list is short, one-sided or mostly websites without references, change the question or the topic.

Are there primary sources you can read? Published collections of documents, digitised newspapers, government archives, memoirs, oral history collections and photographs are often available online or in translation.
Is there at least one serious secondary work? A book or journal article by a historian gives context and shows what is debated.
Do the sources give different perspectives? A question about a strike needs sources from strikers, employers, the government or press; seven sources from one side cannot test a claim.
Can you reach them in time? A source in an archive you cannot visit, or a language you do not read, cannot be used.

Writing Section 1

Section 1 is short, reported at about 400 words, but the IB has said the new investigation puts greater weight on explaining how the question developed. A strong Section 1 therefore does more than state the question. It usually covers five things, in roughly this order:

The question, stated exactly as it will be answered, with its dates and focus.
How it developed: the starting interest, the working question, and what in your reading or early source work made you change it. Be specific: name the source or the debate that changed your mind.
Why it is worth investigating: what is debated, and why the answer matters for understanding the period.
The historical concept, named and explained for this question: what "cause" or "significance" will mean here, and what criteria you will use to judge it.
The scope and the approach: what the question includes and leaves out, and, in a sentence, what kinds of source will answer it (the detail belongs in Section 2).

An annotated sample Section 1. The paragraphs are a model Section 1 (about 370 words) for the Satsuma Rebellion question. Read it with the annotations, then use the same moves for your own question.

Show the worked example

My investigation asks: To what extent was the government's abolition of samurai privileges in 1876 the main cause of the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877?

Annotation. The question comes first, in full, with a named factor and dates. A moderator knows at once what is being judged.

My starting point was an interest in how the samurai, a hereditary warrior class of about two million people including their families, lost their status within a decade of the Meiji Restoration of 1868. Background reading led me to the Satsuma Rebellion, the largest armed challenge to the new government, and my first question was "Why did the Satsuma Rebellion happen?" Reading a general history of Meiji Japan showed that this question would produce a list of causes, so I looked for a disagreement to investigate.

Annotation. The development of the question is told as a sequence of decisions, each with a reason. The word "disagreement" signals that the student is looking for a debatable question.

I found one in the explanations given for the rising. Some accounts stress the measures of 1876, the ban on wearing swords in public in March and the conversion of hereditary stipends into government bonds in August, which ended the samurai's income and status. Others argue that the decisive break came in 1873, when Saigō Takamori resigned from the government after his plan for a mission to Korea was rejected, and that the rebellion grew out of the private schools he founded in Kagoshima and Satsuma's semi-independence. I therefore narrowed my question to test the 1876 measures against these other explanations. The answer matters beyond 1877: if the rising was mainly a defence of lost privileges, it marks the end of the samurai as a class; if it grew mainly from the political split of 1873 and Satsuma's autonomy, it was a struggle over who would control the new state.

Annotation. The student shows that the question rests on a real debate, using specific events and dates, without retelling the whole story, and explains why the answer matters for understanding the period.

The question uses the concept of cause and consequence. I will distinguish long-term conditions (the loss of samurai functions since 1868), short-term causes (the split of 1873 and local Satsuma grievances) and the trigger (the government's attempt to remove arms from Kagoshima in January 1877), and judge "main cause" by asking which factor best explains why the rising happened in Satsuma in 1877, rather than elsewhere or earlier.

Annotation. The concept is explained for this question, and the student sets a criterion for "main cause". This gives Section 3 its structure and its test.

The investigation covers the years 1873–1877 and the motives of the rebels and the government, not the military campaign itself. It draws on government edicts, a letter and statements by participants, and the work of historians writing from Japanese and Western perspectives.

Annotation. A short statement of scope and approach closes the section and leads into Section 2. The sources are named only in general terms here.

The same moves work for any topic. A Section 1 on the Family Codes would explain why the student moved from "women in the Soviet Union" to the legal codes (the sources that were accessible), name continuity and change, and set criteria for change (divorce, property, legitimacy of children, abortion) that Section 3 then applies.

Common problems and how to fix them

Problem	Example	Fix
The question changes between sections	Section 1 asks about "the main cause"; the conclusion answers "how significant"	Copy the final question into the first line of Section 3 and the conclusion, word for word, and check that both answer it.
The concept is named but not used	"This question uses the concept of significance."	Explain what significance means for this question and how you will measure it.
The development is generic	"I was interested in this topic and did research."	Name the reading or source that changed the question, and what changed.
Loaded wording	"How did the brutal regime of … oppress …?"	Use neutral wording that allows more than one answer.
Hidden assumptions	"Why did the Marshall Plan save Western Europe?"	Turn the assumption into the thing being tested: "How far did …?"

Self-check

To do:
My question is focused by place, people, dates and aspect.
To do:
Informed people could reasonably answer my question in different ways.
To do:
I can name at least five accessible sources that would help answer it, from different perspectives.
To do:
My question uses a historical concept, and I can explain what that concept means for this question.
To do:
I can explain how my question developed, naming the reading or sources that changed it.
To do:
My question uses neutral wording and does not assume its own answer.
To do:
Section 1 states the question exactly, explains its development and concept, and sets its scope, with only the context needed.

Carry on with History in Augment

With a free account, Augment remembers where you stopped in the notes and which questions you have marked.

Start free