IB MYP Individuals and Societies: The Four Assessment Criteria in Practice – Practice Questions

These are original questions written for Marlbridge, modelling the kind of evidence-evaluation judgment MYP Individuals and Societies’s assessment actually requires. They are not reproduced IB material – the IB holds copyright in its own subject guides and exemplars. Use these alongside official exemplars available through your school.

Related: Criteria in Practice study guide and revision notes.

---

Section A

1. Name the four assessment criteria for MYP Individuals and Societies. [4]

2. State two things a strong investigation should do with the sources it uses, beyond simply citing them. [2]

---

Section B

3. A student researching a local environmental issue uses two sources: a single blog post and a friend’s opinion, with no comment on either source’s reliability.

(a) Identify what is missing from this investigation. [2] (b) Describe what the student would need to add to move toward top-band evidence. [3]

4. A student’s Criterion A response to “explain why a historical trade route developed where it did” lists three accurate facts (favourable terrain, available water, proximity to resources) but does not connect them to any wider explanatory framework.

(a) Explain why this response is unlikely to reach top band despite being factually accurate. [3] (b) Describe what would need to be added. [3]

5. A student’s write-up presents research findings as a chronological list of dates and events, with no argument, no structure, and no source citations, even though the underlying facts are correct.

(a) Which criterion is this response weakest on, and why? [3] (b) Describe what a stronger version would look like. [3]

---

Section C

6. A student investigating the causes of a historical conflict relies on a single textbook account throughout, presenting its interpretation as the definitive explanation. Explain, with reference to Criterion D specifically, why this approach is unlikely to reach top band, and what the student would need to do differently. [6]

7. Explain why a local-issue investigation combining history and geography can generate strong evidence for all four criteria within a single connected piece of coursework, using one criterion to illustrate how it depends on work already done for an earlier criterion. [6]

---

Worked answers

1. Knowing and understanding, Investigating, Communicating, and Thinking critically. [4]

2. Evaluate the reliability of each source, and evaluate the relevance of each source to the specific research question being investigated. [2] (This is general good practice for any investigation: the public subject brief gives only one-line criterion descriptions, so check your school’s copy of the subject guide for which criterion strand assesses it.)

3. (a) Missing is any evaluation of the sources’ reliability – a blog post and a friend’s opinion are both used without any comment on who produced them, why, or how trustworthy they are for this specific research question; the investigation also uses a very narrow range of source types, with no official report, news source, or other independent evidence to compare against. [2] (b) The student would need to add at least one more varied, credible source type (a local government report, a news article, or a scientific study relevant to the issue), and explicitly state for each source used why it is or is not reliable and relevant to the specific research question, rather than treating source use and evaluation as separate, unconnected steps. [3]

4. (a) Top-band Criterion A evidence requires applying factual and conceptual knowledge to build a reasoned explanation, not just stating accurate facts. Three correct facts listed without an explanatory framework connecting them demonstrates recall, but does not show the response can be applied to explain an unfamiliar case using the same reasoning – which is what the criterion’s top achievement level specifically credits. [3] (b) The response would need to connect the three facts using an appropriate conceptual framework – for example, explaining how favourable terrain, water access and resource proximity together reduced the cost and risk of establishing and maintaining a route, using a framework such as accessibility or cost-benefit reasoning – and ideally show that the same reasoning could be applied to explain why an unfamiliar trade route developed where it did. [3]

5. (a) This response is weakest on Criterion C (Communicating), since the criterion specifically assesses how learning is organised, documented and referenced, not just whether the underlying content is accurate. A chronological list with no argument, structure or citations fails to demonstrate the organisational and referencing skills top-band Communicating evidence requires, regardless of factual accuracy. [3] (b) A stronger version would organise the findings around a clear argument or research question, integrate evidence from named, properly referenced sources at the points that support each part of the argument, and use subject-specific terminology consistently throughout, rather than presenting facts in the order they happened with no interpretive structure. [3]

6. Top-band Criterion D evidence requires explicitly considering more than one plausible perspective or interpretation, evaluating their relative strengths and weaknesses, and reaching a substantiated conclusion about which interpretation the available evidence best supports. Relying on a single textbook account and presenting it as the definitive explanation does not demonstrate this comparative evaluation at all – there is no second perspective being weighed, and no substantiated judgment about which account is better supported, only an unexamined acceptance of one source’s framing. The student would need to seek out at least one genuinely different account or interpretation of the same conflict’s causes – ideally from a source reflecting a different national, political or historiographical perspective – compare it explicitly against the textbook’s account, evaluate the strengths and limitations of each, and reach a conclusion about which the available evidence best supports, rather than presenting either account as simply correct. [6]

7. In a combined history-and-geography local-issue investigation, Criterion A evidence emerges from applying relevant conceptual frameworks (from either discipline) to explain the issue’s origins or dynamics; Criterion B evidence emerges from the process of researching the issue systematically across a genuine range of sources; Criterion C evidence emerges from how that research is organised, referenced and communicated in the final write-up; and Criterion D evidence emerges from a critical evaluation of the issue that weighs different perspectives. Criterion D illustrates the dependency clearly: a strong critical evaluation weighing different perspectives on the local issue is only possible once the Criterion B research has already gathered more than one genuinely different perspective or source type to weigh against each other – if the investigation’s Criterion B work used only one narrow source type, there would be no real perspectives available to compare for Criterion D, regardless of how carefully the final evaluation is written. [6]

Official syllabus

International Baccalaureate Organization, Middle Years Programme Subject Brief – Individuals and Societies, from 2014, (c) 2021 – the same source cited by the study guide and revision notes. Verified 2026-09-06.