IB Psychology IA Structure: A Section-by-Section Blueprint

Four sections, four headings, 2,200 words. Use the headings exactly as they appear in the criteria, because it makes it obvious to the examiner where each criterion is being met, and you want it obvious.

Introduction. Research Methodology. Data Collection. Discussion. Then Works Cited.

This article is the paragraph-level blueprint: how many paragraphs each section needs, what each one has to do, and the order to write them in that stops you throwing work away.

The word budget

The 2,200-word limit is an IB requirement. The per-section targets are recommendations, and their real job is protecting the discussion.

A published sample proposal comes in at roughly 450, 490, 505 and 660, totalling just over 2,000. That leaves headroom, which is the point. Examiners stop reading at 2,200, and what sits at the end of your proposal is a quarter of the marks.

Introduction, about four paragraphs

The problem. What is going wrong, and who for. Include a sentence saying why it is harmful, not just that it exists. That single sentence is one of the cheapest band lifts in the whole IA.

Study one. Findings and conclusions only. No procedural detail. Then a link sentence saying what this means for your investigation.

Study two. Same shape, same link sentence. Study one usually shows the problem is real. Study two usually shows why it matters or what affects it.

The gap and the aim. Name what the two studies leave unexamined, state your aim or research question, and signpost that implications come in the discussion.

Two studies only. A third earns nothing and eats words you will need later.

Research Methodology, about four paragraphs

The method and why. Name one of the four, then answer the question the criterion is really asking: what is it about this method that makes it the most appropriate way to investigate this particular question?

Sampling and sample. Technique, and why that technique. Sample characteristics, and why those. Number, and why that number.

Procedure. The steps, each with a reason attached. Setting, design if experimental, and how the study would actually run.

Ethics. The considerations that matter for your study, each one naming something about your own investigation and each with an action attached.

Data Collection, about three paragraphs

The tool. One tool, created by you, with a minimum of five items. A questionnaire, Likert-type scale, observation checklist or interview schedule. Present it, and say plainly that it would work and why.

The decisions inside it. Why these items, this scale, this order, this wording. Every choice connected back to your aim.

What could go wrong. The challenges of collecting this data with this tool, from this population. Specific to your investigation, not to data collection in general.

The full tool goes in the appendix, which does not count toward your words.

Discussion, about five paragraphs

This is the longest section, it carries the highest command term in the rubric, and it is the one most likely to be rushed because it comes last.

Potential findings. What you might find, in detail. Give a second and a third possible outcome, not just the one you expect.

Implications. What should change, and for whom. Something a real person could implement, not "raise awareness".

Researcher bias. How your own position could shape the investigation. Discussed, not named.

The additional method. One of the remaining three, and why it would help.

The deeper-understanding sentence. Say explicitly how that second method would increase understanding of what you are investigating. It is about twenty words and it is the most commonly missing sentence in the entire IA.

Write it in this order, not that one

The order the IA is printed in is not the order to write it in. Five rules explain why.

1. Sketch your data collection tool before your topic is approved. Some perfectly good ideas cannot produce one.
2. Plan your discussion before you write any prose. If your findings and implications do not work, your topic does not work.
3. Write the discussion properly, not last and not in a hurry.
4. Hand in a finished draft. You get one round of written feedback, and a rough draft spends it on problems you could have fixed yourself.
5. Check the word count in week two, not week three.

Week one is decisions and no prose at all. Take three ideas through the topic questions until one survives. Nail down the population and the problem. Find your two studies and save them with full references. Sketch five items for your tool, or change the topic. Lock the aim and plan the discussion in notes.

Week two is one section a day. Introduction, methodology, tool then data collection, discussion, assemble and count. None of them perfect first time.

Hand in at the end of week two. That is your one round of feedback, so hand in something you would be content to submit as it stands.

Three weeks of school days, around eighteen hours, which sits just under the twenty the IB recommends.

The parts that earn nothing and cost marks when missing

Title page: title of the investigation, IB student code, date of submission, word count.

References: in-text citations throughout and a reference list in APA or another standard format. No footnotes. References are not assessed but are required for academic integrity.

Appendix: a full copy of your own data collection tool.

None of this is marked. All of it gets flagged if it is wrong.

How to mark your own draft

Read it three times, and read it against the twelve bullets rather than as a whole document.

Judging your work as a whole tells you almost nothing. It reads well, you feel fine about it, and one bullet underneath is sitting at the bottom band.

Go bullet by bullet. Rate each one, then decide the best fit for the criterion. Two bullets at 5 to 6 and one at 1 to 2 is usually a 4, which is the arithmetic worth internalising: a criterion is rarely lost by being bad at everything. It is lost by being excellent at two things and absent on the third.

Absence is the enemy, not weakness.

What to fix first

If you are short of time, fix in this order. Ranked by how much each one strengthens a descriptor for the time it takes.

1. Write the deeper-understanding sentence, in the final paragraph of your discussion.
2. Claim your tool is effective, and say why, in the first paragraph of data collection.
3. Add a reason to every step of your procedure.
4. Name your own study inside every ethical point.
5. Say why your problem is harmful, in one sentence in your introduction.
6. Give a second and third possible outcome in your discussion.

One reassurance

You do not need 24 out of 24.

Twenty is a very strong mark, and it is reachable by going through the twelve bullets one at a time and checking you have actually met each one. Nobody gets 24 by accident. Plenty of people lose four marks by accident.

That asymmetry is the entire argument for checking.

If you want the sentence banks, the band descriptors for all twelve bullets and a complete model proposal, that is what the PsychExcel Complete IA Handbook is built for.