First assessment May 2027 · Standard Level and Higher Level
The class practicals are new for the 2027 IB Psychology specification, compulsory, and the skills and understanding they develop are critical for Paper 2 Section A and the Internal Assessment.
The single most useful decision you can make is to keep the topic constant and change only the method. One topic, four practicals, four methods. This post explains why that approach works and how the practicals are assessed.
What is a class practical?
A class practical is a small, teacher-supervised investigation that students carry out as part of the course. Its purpose is to give them first-hand experience of how a research method actually works – the decisions, the trade-offs, and the limits of what the method can show. They are not mini-IAs. Even a practical that yields non-significant or imperfect findings still prepares students fully for Paper 2 Section A, because they are only examined on the process of planning and conducting research.
There are four practicals, one for each of the four main research methods:
- an experiment (true or quasi-experiment)
- a survey or questionnaire (the IB uses the two terms interchangeably)
- an interview (structured or semi-structured) or focus group
- an observation (naturalistic or controlled; overt or covert; participant or non-participant)
Why one topic, four methods
Keeping the topic constant will help students fully understand the methods. Because the topic never changes, any differences in what they find, the kind of data, the confidence in the conclusion, and the questions that can and cannot be answered come from the method itself. The four practicals address a single topic from four different perspectives, each with a distinct aim.
This is also an enormous practical saving. You decide on one workable topic once at the start, rather than designing four separate investigations. Students carry a familiar question into each new method and focus their attention on the method, rather than on getting to grips with fresh content each time.
When students come to design a new study using a different research method in Paper 2, Section A, question 4, they will already be deeply familiar with it, having designed and conducted the practical already.
Choosing the topic
Everything above depends on choosing a topic that all four methods can genuinely investigate, which is harder than it looks, because a topic that makes a great observation might be impossible to run as an experiment, and a topic that surveys effectively might have nothing worth observing.
A workable topic needs four things at once: something students can manipulate (for the experiment), something participants can describe (for the interview), something visible (for the observation), and something participants can report about themselves (for the survey). A topic that fails any one of those tests is not a good class-practical topic, however interesting it sounds… and you may only discover the failure halfway through the second practical, when it is too late to change course!
One firm constraint to note now is that conformity and obedience studies are never permitted, and other ethical exclusions apply. Check the IB Diploma Psychology guide if you have any doubt about a topic’s suitability.
Turning one topic into four aims
Once you have a topic that passes the test, each method needs its own aim – a focused statement of what that particular practical sets out to find. The aims are not interchangeable: the experiment asks whether one thing causes another, while the survey asks only how two things go together. An observation records behaviour as it happens, while an interview explores the meaning behind it.
Getting these four aims right for a single shared topic is critical for the class practicals, and it is the part students find hardest… matching each aim to what its method can actually show. It is also the skill they can carry straight into the IA.
How class practicals are assessed: Paper 2, Section A
This is where the practicals are critical in your scheme of work. Paper 2 Section A is dedicated entirely to the class practicals, with four compulsory questions and a fixed structure. The focus is on the research method itself, not the context in which it was run.
The four questions always follow this template:
- Describe how the research method was applied in your class practical, including the aim and procedure. (4 marks – knowledge and understanding)
- Explain a given concept in relation to the method used in your class practical. (4 marks – application)
- Compare and contrast the method used in your class practical with an alternate method. (6 marks)
- Design a study using yet another method to investigate the same topic as your class practical. (6 marks)
Note that for Question 4, students must redesign the same topic using a different method, which the one-topic approach supports. Students who have run all four practicals on a single shared topic have already designed the answer to Q4.
The class practical–IA connection
The practicals directly support the skills that students will need for the Internal Assessment. The IA, a 24-mark research proposal, asks students to design a study using one of the four research methods covered in the class practicals. A student who has fully engaged with all four will begin their IA able to choose a method and justify it, rather than picking one abstractly. In practice, the practical that a student finds most engaging might become the method they build their proposal around.
Understanding concepts and causal language
Question 2 always asks students to explain a core concept in relation to their practical. The six concepts: bias, causality, change, measurement, perspective, and responsibility should run throughout the practicals and be discussed as they arise in the design.
One important habit to develop for your students is calibrated causal language. An observation or a survey cannot support a claim that one variable causes another; at best, it shows association (correlation). Encouraging students to write “is associated with,” “supports,” or “enables” rather than “causes” or “proves,” and to understand why the method allows one but not the other, is critical for top-band responses across the whole course. Using a single topic across all research methods will highlight this to students, who will see the same question lead to a stronger causal claim in the experiment but only an associative (correlational) one in the survey.
We are currently working on an IB Diploma Psychology Class Practical Teacher Companion and Student Workbook. They include ready-to-use topics, worked aims for every method, and Paper 2 Section A practice, so you can walk into your first class practical fully planned. These will be out in the near future – subscribe to our email list on the right-hand sidebar to be notified when they are released!