IB Psychology IA Ideas for the 2027 Research Proposal

By Michael Thompson · Education Specialist; 10 years teaching the IB at Bromsgrove School · Published 4 October 2026

IB Psychology IA ideas for the 2027 course need to fit a specific format that is new to many students: instead of running a small experiment, you design a research proposal investigating a population of interest. The new DP Psychology course, first taught in August 2025 with first assessment in May 2027, asks both SL and HL students to submit a written research proposal worth 24 marks - 30% of the final grade at SL and 20% at HL. Your proposal must use one of four research methods tied to the four contexts studied in class: interview, observation, survey or questionnaire, or experiment. The ideas below are grouped by method, each with a named population, so you can see immediately whether a topic fits the research proposal format.

Key Takeaways

In This Article

  1. What the 2027 IB Psychology IA Actually Requires
  2. How the Four Contexts Map to Four Research Methods
  3. IB Psychology IA Topic Ideas Using Interview (Health and Well-being)
  4. IB Psychology IA Topic Ideas Using Observation and Survey
  5. IB Psychology IA Topic Ideas Using Experiments (Learning and Cognition)
  6. How to Test an IB Psychology IA Idea Before You Commit
  7. Connecting Your Topic to the Six Course Concepts
  8. What to Do Next

1. What the 2027 IB Psychology IA Actually Requires

The best ib psychology ia ideas share one quality: they fit the new assessment format precisely. The 2027 Internal Assessment is a written research proposal, not a conducted experiment. You design a study, justify every methodological choice, and submit the document. You do not need to run a single session with a single participant.

Per the IB and confirmed by ManageBac, the IA is worth 24 marks, allocated 20 teaching hours, internally assessed by your teacher, and externally moderated by the IB. It counts for 30% of your final grade at SL and 20% at HL.

The core task: propose a study that investigates a population of interest using one of the four research methods practised in class. Those methods map directly onto the four contexts every student studies: interview, observation, survey/questionnaire, and experiment. ManageBac confirms all students, SL and HL alike, study all four contexts.

The exact assessment criteria and mark splits are set out in the subject guide on the IB Programme Resource Centre, so ask your teacher for that section. What is public is the shape of the write-up: ManageBac describes a proposal organised under the subheadings introduction, research methodology, data collection and discussion.

Comparison note (previous course only): Students assessed in November 2026 or earlier completed an experiment-replication IA requiring actual data collection and a written report. The 2027 format replaces that entirely. If you are sitting your first exam in May 2027, the experiment-replication model does not apply to you.

One counter-intuitive consequence of this shift: there is no data to fall back on. The whole proposal rests on your design, so a weak topic choice weakens every section that follows. Picking the right topic before you begin writing is not preliminary work; it is the work.

2. How the Four Contexts Map to Four Research Methods

The IB's 2027 course pairs each of the four contexts with one specific research method for the class practicals, and those pairings are fixed. Per the IB Psychology updates, your IA must use one of the four methods used in the class practicals. The public course outline does not say your IA topic has to sit in the matching context, so check with your teacher how your school handles this. The minimum sample sizes below are the IB's minimums for the class practicals.

ContextRequired methodMinimum sample size
Health and Well-beingInterview (structured, semi-structured, or focus group)1 individual, or 3-8 in one focus group
Human DevelopmentObservation (naturalistic or controlled)1 participant
Human RelationshipsSurvey / questionnaire10 participants
Learning and CognitionExperiment (true or quasi-)5 participants

The non-obvious point here: the observation practical shares the smallest sample requirement (one participant) with the individual interview, but that does not make it the easiest method. Designing a valid observational coding scheme for a single participant is methodologically demanding in ways a ten-person survey is not.

This mapping matters from the moment you start generating IB psychology IA ideas. Your population of interest and your psychology IA research question must be answerable with the method you choose. A question that needs self-report data will not work as an observation, no matter how interesting it is. Settle the method first; then build the question around it.

Per ManageBac's subject support overview, a minimum of four class practicals are required across the course, with 30 teaching hours allocated. Your IA uses the method from whichever of those practicals best fits your research question.

3. IB Psychology IA Topic Ideas Using Interview (Health and Well-being)

The Health and Well-being class practical uses an interview, with a minimum of one individual or a focus group of three to eight participants. A small sample is not a weakness for this method. Interview data is rich and qualitative, and your research proposal is judged on the rigour of your design, not the statistical power of your imagined sample.

One counter-intuitive point worth flagging early: specificity of population matters more than novelty of topic. A question about stress is not investigable as written. A question (written for this guide) about how Year 12 students at an international school understand the causes of their exam anxiety in the month before mock exams is investigable, because you can define who you would recruit, what you would ask, and how you would analyse the responses.

The four topic starters below are written for this guide.

A note on ethics. Topics that require participants to disclose ongoing crisis states, active eating disorder treatment, or current self-harm would need very detailed ethical justification in your methodology section, and your teacher may steer you away from them. For a research proposal, choosing a population that can give informed consent freely and without institutional gatekeeping reduces complexity and lets you focus on method design rather than ethical management.

4. IB Psychology IA Topic Ideas Using Observation and Survey

The 2027 IB Psychology course pairs observation with the human development context and survey/questionnaire with the human relationships context. Each method has a minimum sample size for the class practicals: one participant for observation, ten for a survey. That gap matters more than it looks. A single observed participant forces you to describe behaviour in rich procedural detail; ten survey respondents require you to think carefully about what kind of data your instrument actually generates.

Observation: Human Development Topic Starters

Observation is about depth rather than numbers, so your proposal needs to be methodologically tight rather than statistically broad. The non-obvious trade-off here is that covert observation, while sometimes more ecologically valid, raises consent questions you must address at the proposal stage, before any data collection is designed.

Three topic starters (all written for the guide):

Example research question (written for the guide): Broad theme: "How do children behave at school." Scoped version: "What self-regulatory behaviours do children aged 6-8 display during a 15-minute structured task in a primary classroom setting?"

Survey/Questionnaire: Human Relationships Topic Starters

Three topic starters, each with a named population (written for the guide):

Likert vs. open-ended items: Likert scales produce ordinal data you can summarise numerically, which makes patterns easier to describe across ten respondents. Open-ended items generate qualitative responses that can reveal why a pattern exists, but are harder to analyse with a small sample. Mixing both is possible, but your proposal needs to justify what each item type is designed to capture and how you will handle the different data in your discussion.

Example research question (written for the guide): Broad theme: "Social media and relationships." Scoped version: "How do adults aged 60-75 living alone report the relationship between daily digital communication frequency and perceived loneliness, as measured by a purpose-designed Likert-scale questionnaire?"

The scoped version names the population, the instrument, and the psychological concept being measured. That specificity is what separates a viable IB psychology IA idea from a broad topic that cannot be turned into a proposal.

5. IB Psychology IA Topic Ideas Using Experiments (Learning and Cognition)

The learning and cognition context pairs with the experiment method, and the minimum sample size is five participants. That is low enough to make a true experiment workable in a class practical, as long as the independent variable is manipulated and participants are either randomly allocated to conditions or, in a repeated measures design, take part in both conditions with the order counterbalanced. When random allocation is not possible, for example because you are comparing two intact class groups, the design becomes a quasi-experiment. Both are acceptable for the research proposal, but you must justify your choice clearly in the methodology section.

Cognitive approach psychology experiments are the most common territory here. Memory, attention, decision-making, and learning all lend themselves to clean independent variable and dependent variable structures, which makes them practical to propose and straightforward to connect to the six course concepts, particularly causality and measurement.

Four topic starters written for the guide:

Example research question written for the guide:

"Does the presentation format of a 20-item word list (semantic categories versus random order) affect the number of words correctly recalled in a free-recall test among IB Psychology students (N = 5 minimum)?"

Here, the independent variable is the list format (two levels: categorised versus random), the dependent variable is the number of words correctly recalled, and the population is IB Psychology students at one school. The design is a true experiment if participants are randomly allocated to the two conditions.

One non-obvious trade-off worth noting: because the 2027 IA is a research proposal rather than a conducted study, you are not bound by what you can physically recruit. You can propose a sample of 30 participants with random allocation, even if your school has only one psychology class. The five-participant minimum reflects the class practical requirement, not a ceiling for your proposal.

6. How to Test an IB Psychology IA Idea Before You Commit

Before you spend time drafting a full proposal, run your idea through four quick questions. A "no" on any one of them means the idea needs reworking, not discarding.

The four-question check

  1. Is the population specific and accessible? You need to be able to describe your participants precisely: age range, setting, shared characteristic. "Adults" is not specific enough. "University students aged 18-22 enrolled in an introductory psychology course" is.
  2. Is the method one of the four approved methods? The 2027 course permits experiment, interview, observation, and survey/questionnaire only. A content analysis or case study, however reasonable academically, sits outside the framework.
  3. Is the topic ethical and feasible to propose? Your proposal must include informed consent and protect participant welfare. Steer away from populations who cannot give free, voluntary consent (young children without parental consent, people in active mental health treatment), topics requiring deception where debriefing is unlikely to remove lasting harm, and sensitive areas with no clear research justification for the distress they might cause.
  4. Does the research question connect to at least one of the six course concepts? The concepts are bias, causality, change, measurement, perspective, and responsibility. If you cannot map your question to even one, the proposal will struggle to anchor its discussion section.

A common trap worth naming

"Social media use" as a topic fails question one almost every time. It specifies no population, no concept, and no investigable question. "How do female students aged 16-17 perceive the relationship between passive Instagram scrolling and their self-reported mood?" (written for this guide) is the same broad area, made workable.

Once your idea passes all four checks, run it past your teacher before you begin drafting. A five-minute conversation at that stage costs nothing; rewriting a half-finished proposal costs days.

7. Connecting Your Topic to the Six Course Concepts

The six course concepts, bias, causality, change, measurement, perspective, and responsibility, are not a checklist to mention in passing. Per the IB's curriculum overview, they underpin the entire course structure, and a research proposal that foregrounds one of them from the start is easier to introduce coherently than one that tries to bolt a concept on later.

The practical point is this: the same topic area can generate very different research questions depending on which concept you foreground.

Topic areaConcept foregroundedResearch question shape
Word recall under distractionMeasurementHow is recall operationalised, and what does that choice miss?
Word recall under distractionCausalityDoes background noise cause a measurable change in recall accuracy?
Social media use and sleepChangeHow does reported sleep quality shift after self-imposed screen limits?
Social media use and sleepBiasHow might self-report distort participants' accounts of screen time?

HL students can also draw on the HL extensions covering culture, motivation, and technology, which cut across all four contexts: a topic like how motivational framing affects revision behaviour links naturally to motivation as well as to a concept like causality. That is optional, though. SL and HL students complete the same IA task, so SL students are not at a disadvantage.

The actionable step: once you have a provisional topic, write one sentence for each of the six concepts and ask which sentence generates the clearest investigable question. That concept belongs in your introduction from draft one.

8. What to Do Next

Before shortlisting any ib psychology ia ideas, read the actual criteria. This week, ask your teacher for the IA section of the Psychology subject guide; it sits on the IB Programme Resource Centre, which teachers and coordinators can access. The guide sets out what each criterion requires and how the 24 marks are distributed. Reading it once, before you commit to a topic or method, will save you from designing a proposal that fits your instincts but not the assessment. One counter-intuitive detail worth knowing: because you are proposing a study rather than running one, the strength of your methodological justification matters as much as the topic itself. Choose a question your method can actually answer. Read the guide first, then shortlist.

FAQ

Do IB Psychology IA ideas have to be based on real studies?

They should be grounded in published psychological research, since that is how you justify your design choices, but the 2027 IA asks you to design a study for a population of interest rather than replicate a classic experiment, as the old IA did.

Can SL and HL students use the same IB Psychology IA ideas?

Yes - both SL and HL students complete the same research proposal IA task, so topic ideas work for either level; HL students may additionally draw on the culture, motivation, and technology extensions when framing their research question.

How many participants does an IB Psychology IA need?

The IB's published minimum sample sizes are for the class practicals: one participant for an individual interview or three to eight in a focus group, one for an observation, ten for a survey or questionnaire, and five for an experiment. The public course outline gives no separate sample size for the IA, which you design but do not run, so propose a sample that suits your method and population and justify it.

Are IB Psychology IA ideas from the old course still usable in 2027?

Topic areas may overlap, but the IA format changed significantly - students first assessed in May 2027 submit a research proposal rather than a conducted experiment report, so old IA structures and criteria do not apply.

What makes a good psychology IA research question for the 2027 course?

A strong research question names a specific population of interest, uses one of the four approved research methods, connects to at least one of the six course concepts, and is ethical and feasible to propose without actually running the study.

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