Your Investigation: Taking Citizenship Action
The process behind your own citizenship action: choosing a question to investigate, gathering primary and secondary evidence, planning and taking the action, and evaluating its impact and your own contribution.
Use it, the way the marks are given
Free interactive practice at using the material, which is what the marks are for.
Start revising freeWhat you'll cover
Your own citizenship action
For the active citizenship task you choose an issue you care about, find out about it, and then do something to make a difference. It is not enough to have an opinion: you gather evidence, plan an action, carry it out, and judge how well it worked. This module walks through that process step by step.
Investigation vocabulary
Learn these four terms before you plan your action.
Two kinds of evidence
A strong investigation uses both kinds of evidence.
Follow the whole process
A top answer never jumps straight to the action. It runs the full six-stage process: decide the question, carry out initial research with both primary and secondary evidence, plan the action, take it, assess the impact, then evaluate the whole process. Keep the last two apart: assessing the impact judges the outcome, while evaluating the process asks what went well and what you would do differently.
Match the term
- citizenship action
- primary evidence
- secondary evidence
- evaluation
- doing something to make a difference on an issue
- information you gather for yourself
- information someone else gathered first
- judging how well the action worked
Primary or secondary
- a survey you run
- an interview you carry out
- a newspaper article
- official government figures
- primary evidence you collect yourself
- primary evidence from talking to people
- secondary evidence written by others
- secondary evidence published by others
Which is primary?
Which of these is an example of primary evidence?
- A survey you carry out yourself.
- A magazine article on the issue.
- A charity report you read.
- Government figures you look up.
A good evaluation
Select the TWO things a good evaluation includes.
- What worked well and what did not.
- Your own contribution to the action.
- Only the parts that went well.
- Blaming others for any problems.
Order the six stages
Put the six stages of a citizenship investigation in order, earliest first.
- Decide the question or issue
- Carry out the initial research
- Plan the action
- Take the action
- Assess the impact of the action
- Evaluate the whole process
Complete the facts
Taking action to make a difference is citizenship _____. Evidence you gather yourself is called _____ evidence. Evidence others gathered first is called _____ evidence. Before acting you make a _____ setting out your aim and methods. At the end you write an _____ of how well it worked.
Plan the survey
For your primary research you plan to survey 4 classes with 25 students in each class. Multiply 4 by 25 to find the total number of responses you plan to collect. What is the answer?
Spot the primary evidence
Tap the TWO examples of primary evidence you collect yourself.
- a survey you hand out
- an interview you record
- a news article you read
- a published charity report
What next?
Read each situation and choose the best next step.
- You care about litter near your school but have no evidence yet. What should you do first?
- You want to know what students at your school think about the issue. What is the best method?
- Your action is finished and some parts did not go to plan. What should your evaluation do?
Plan your action
Explain how you would carry out a citizenship investigation and action on an issue you care about.
- Explain how you would choose a question and research it
- Describe the primary and secondary evidence you would use
- Explain how you would take action and evaluate its impact