Advice needed on different history IA topics

[Sophia]

Hello, so I am interested in exploring some parts of American history with this internal assessment. I have the following ideas:

1. Integrating African Americans into Caucasian schools in the USA –Compare what the situation was in a Southern State to a Northern State (perhaps Arkansas vs New York?)

2. Vietnam War (and Code Orange)

3. Portrayal of Native Americans in US media in the 1950s

4. McCarthyism

I know the last three ideas are still very vague. I was thinking of choosing the first idea, could a compare and contrast answer work with this?

Which idea do you prefer best and do you have any advice?

plus how advanced/complex do these questions have to be? thanks

[Elisabed Gedevanishvili]

I am not sure about compare and contrast. I think the best way is to investigate the cause and effect relationship in History IA. Remember that your question needs to be narrow. Unfortunately I do not have deep knowledge of the topics you have provided, but I can tell you that probably it will be better to come up with a more specific topic/question for each option, from there it will be easier to eliminate. You have to remember that you are limited in the word count.

I personally would choose the Vietnam War and Code Orange because it is the easiest one to come up with a cause and effect relationship.

Questions have to be specific, here's mine: "To what extent was Wallis Simpson's reputation the most important factor leading to the abdication of Edward VIII in 1936?"

Hope this helps and good luck!

If you have any further questions don't hesitate and ask

[alefal]

Hey there!

I agree to a large extent to what Elisabed has written above, though I have a couple of points to add. First of all, compare and contrast works very well in history IAs - that's essentially what you should attempt to achieve. This is easily achieved with phrases such as 'to what extent...?' However, with your first research question, it wouldn't have changed much. Judging from the way it is phrased, you would analyse the topic from a sociological perspective rather than a historical perspective, and it would thus not be suitable for history papers. This would also be very easily achieved by the third topic you've considered.

Both McCarthyism and the Vietnam War are interesting options for a history IA. However, for both of these you need to be very specific in terms of what you're going to analyse. You have only about 6-800 words to actually analyse the topic to a certain depth, and only approximately 4-500 words to summarise all relevant evidence to the particular topic you've chosen (estimates taken from this thread). In an ideal world, even your first topic would be too broad, as you could very easily write more than 800 analytical words on the topic. In fact, it would be more suitable as an Extended Essay RQ (given that there would be a subject in which such an RQ would fit). However, luckily, we don't live in an ideal world, so don't be too afraid.

Given that there have been published multiple books dedicated to both McCarthyism and Agent Orange, you need to be very careful in how you focus your RQ. As my general advice for the EE goes, 'if someone has written (or is able to write) books on the subject, you need to narrow down the research question a lot.' This is even more true for the IA. I replied in this thread how the general process for the EE from choosing a topic to actually writing the EE can be described. Much of this is very relevant for the IA as well, just scale things down a bit. For instance, with the History IA, you generally want to decide on a topic sooner rather than later, which means you have less time to do preliminary research on the topics themselves.

My research question for the History IA was as follows: Why did Stalin’s policy on a Korean War change from 24 September 1949 to 30 January 1950? To substantiate this topic, I chose to focus on two particular first hand sources, one decision from the Soviet politburo and a telegram from Joseph Stalin to Kim Il Sung. I hope this gives you an idea (together with Elisabed's RQ and the ones provided in the subject guide) of how specific the IAs can and should be.

Good luck!

[Sophia]

thanks a lot guys! i took your advice and came up with a totally different research question that does relate to history and is on the topic i wanted to do it on!!!