Choose a History investigation topic by testing its sources
A History investigation topic should give you a question to examine through evidence.
Begin with a historical tension
A History investigation topic should give you a question to examine through evidence. Start with a tension you noticed in class, such as disagreement over causes, the effectiveness of a policy or the significance of an event. Then define a place and period. The topic need not be unusually obscure. A familiar historical problem can support a focused investigation when the evidence and scope allow you to develop your own reasoned answer.
Compare three candidates
Create three possible topics and list the sources you can actually obtain for each. Include enough information to identify the source's author, context and relevance. A dramatic topic with inaccessible evidence is less workable than a smaller topic with material you can evaluate. Do not assume that finding many search results establishes feasibility. Open and inspect the material, checking whether it addresses your proposed question rather than merely mentions the period.
Try a local-policy example
Imagine you are interested in a town's wartime food-rationing policy. One candidate asks whether rationing was successful everywhere. A narrower candidate examines whether the policy reduced documented shortages in that town during a defined period. Municipal records and local reporting may provide different perspectives on implementation. If those materials are incomplete, consider a question about officials' stated priorities instead of making claims about outcomes the evidence cannot support.
Look for interpretive room
A workable topic should allow more than a factual summary. Write two plausible answers and identify what evidence could distinguish them. If the answer appears to be a date or an uncontested fact, revise the question. If answering it requires explaining a whole century, narrow the period or outcome. Sources that disagree can be useful, but disagreement alone is not the investigation: you need to explain why their accounts differ and what can reasonably be concluded.
Commit with a feasibility note
Prepare a page containing the topic, tentative question, accessible sources and important gaps. Add a short explanation of the historical problem you would investigate. Review it with your teacher before collecting an extensive bibliography. A topic may change as reading develops, so keep your initial note and record the reasons for revisions. This helps distinguish productive narrowing from repeatedly abandoning an idea whenever the first evidence proves complicated.
Check the evidence trail before you finish
Choose one important sentence from your response and trace it back to the source or class material that supports it. Check whether you have stated an observation, inferred a cause or adopted another historian's interpretation. Those claims need different kinds of justification. Record precise references in research notes and separate quotations from your own paraphrases. Then ask what evidence could weaken the sentence and whether your answer acknowledges that possibility. This short audit improves the relationship between evidence and argument without requiring you to add more material simply for length. When accounts disagree, check whether they refer to the same period, population and outcome before deciding that one contradicts the other. This comparison can reveal a difference in scope that a simple reliability judgment would miss.
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Official references
This is an original practical guide from IBvia. The examples are illustrative; your subject guide, assessment year and school instructions determine the requirements.
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