I.B. BUSINESS.

Unlike the HL internal assessment in IB business, which emphasises collecting primary data,  the emphasis in the SL internal assessment is on collecting secondary data. Primary data is data that you collect yourself, using interviews, surveys, questionnaires etc.  Secondary data is data that someone else has already collected or assembled for you. Examples are business reports, articles in the news media, information on company websites and Annual Reports. For this reason, the SL internal assessment is quicker and easier to do, because you have the data all there at your fingers tips, as it were.

Here is the assessment criteria for the supporting documents:-

A number of things need to be noted here.

• Don’t select documents that are more than 3 years old
• Ensure documents are translated into the language of submission, if they are written in a different language.
• Include a minimum of 3, and a maximum of 5 documents. And don’t exceed the maximum!
• They must be relevant, in-depth and must ‘provide a range of different views’.

By ‘range of different views’ it means that the documents must illustrate  different view points and opinions about the company or issue / problem that you are studying. So, for example, if all your data sources come from the company itself i.e. are all internal to the company, such as Annual Reports, marketing documents, the company website etc. then it is likely that you are going to be reading data that is biased in favour of the company and it’s activities. This may hinder your ability to really objectively analyse and evaluate the company, its strategies and the issue that you are studying. 

So it’s important to get documents that are not just internal to the company, but also ones that are external as well.  These should be more balanced and critical of the company. 

Prior to my students starting their research, I give them this document to help them collect a wide range of data sources (see below). I ask them to collect as many different internal and external sources of data as they can on the company or problem / issue they are studying prior to them writing their internal assessment.