Applied Science: FAQs to help you and your students with F182 Investigating Science
01 May 2026
Amy Brewer, Science Subject Advisor
With the first moderation window out of the way I’ve looked at the questions we get about the Cambridge Advanced National Applied Science coursework unit, F182 Investigating Science. This is a fantastic unit that builds practical confidence, encourages critical thinking and develops key skills ready for further education.
In this blog I’ll answer the questions raised most often by centres.
Research questions
Do students all need different investigations?
Can they have the same independent variable?
Are qualitative outcomes allowed?
Must questions link explicitly to F180 content?
Research questions must be unique, but the differences between them does not need to be significant. Each question must have one quantitative independent variable and one quantitative dependent variable. If students choose to investigate the same title from our set assignments, their research questions should be differentiated by having a different independent variable, using a different methodology, or focusing on a different context.
For example:
Student A: Does an increase of ten degrees in temperature double the rate of reaction between calcium chips and hydrochloric acid, as determined by a change in mass?
Student B: If change in mass is followed, will an increase in ten degrees in temperature double the rate of reaction between magnesium and sulfuric acid?
Although these research questions are similar, they are investigating a different chemical reaction, so there’s enough variation for these students to investigate and write up their responses independently.
If a student designs a qualitative research question, they wouldn’t be able to achieve P1, and it may limit their ability to gain some of the mathematical analysis marks later on. But because of our full compensation model, they could still achieve a good mark overall.
Students’ investigations must relate to the titles in the set assignment. These titles are always drawn from F180 Fundamentals of Science, so investigations will always be relevant to taught content.
Teachers should guide students towards an investigation that meets the requirements of this Level 3 qualification, and they should investigate something where the answer isn’t already known.
Supervision, security and access questions
What counts as supervised vs unsupervised time?
Can students access work at home?
How should digital files be secured?
Both the specification and the set assignments for NEA units include guidance about supervised and unsupervised activities. Students and teachers must sign an authenticity form to confirm all of the work is their own, except for any that is appropriately referenced. The supervised nature of the written assignments helps teachers to sign this form with confidence, requiring all aspects of the written response to happen in front of the teacher.
Supervision is not exam conditions. Students may use their class notes and access the internet while writing their responses. They should not discuss the work with one another, but teachers can review their work with them, keeping them on track and giving general guidance.
Some research tasks in Applied Science can be completed outside of lesson time. Encourage students to stick to the recommended time to help them with workload and wellbeing. They must complete the write-up of the response to the task under supervision.
If students use digital files outside the classroom, centres need to prevent them accessing their work outside supervised lessons. This is often easiest to manage through shared drive permissions, so it’s worth discussing options with your IT support team.
Any reattempts (before moderation) or resubmissions (after moderation) must also take place under supervision.
Practical issues and data quality questions
What if an experiment fails?
Do students need to calibrate everything?
How do we judge “good enough” data?
We’ve had lots of questions from teachers on both Applied Science and Human Biology NEAs about failing experiments. Many teachers have been concerned about their students getting ‘the right answer’ or data that doesn’t follow the trend. With so much emphasis on knowing the only answer and outcomes for “required practicals,” it’s understandable some teachers have forgotten that real science investigations can be sloppy and unpredictable. They could reveal something new and exciting, or they might only prove the null hypothesis.
One of the strengths of F182 is that it allows time for students to explore, practise and think critically. If a student plans an investigation based on sound science, collects data competently, and uses appropriate methods, they are doing science!
Even if the results don’t support the hypothesis, students can still:
- carry out mathematical analysis
- evaluate their method
- draw conclusions
It just won’t be what they were expecting, and what a wonderful thing that is!
However, if a student’s practical isn’t working or will not work without intervention, at whatever stage, teachers can support them to move their work forwards. The full compensation model means that although they cannot gain the mark for the relevant criteria where they have needed help, they can still collect all of the other marks available.
Students aren’t required to calibrate any equipment or standardise any reagents; this can all be prepared for them. They do need to submit a detailed requisition list for Task 2, and teachers can use this to plan resources. Students should carry out appropriate procedures to ensure they obtain valid results, which can include washing equipment to avoid contamination, and avoiding other zero, human and random errors.
As with our A Level practical work guidance, students should:
- Aim for around 5 data points to draw lines of best fit and identify trends.
- Repeat their results at least twice to identify anomalies and allow for appropriate mathematical analysis later.
- Record data with the right numbers of decimal places.
- Control relevant variables and avoid systematic and random errors wherever possible.
This should ensure they are collecting “sufficient” and “high-quality” data.
Marking, feedback and resubmission questions
Can tasks be marked separately?
How much feedback is allowed?
How many times can students resubmit?
As detailed in Section 7 of the specification, marking must take place at the end of the assignment. With F182, we encourage teachers to review the work students are planning during Task 1 and 2 to ensure:
- It’s relevant to the title they’ve chosen and research question they have designed
- It will produce good data in an appropriate time
- It’s safe for that student to carry out
- The centre can provide all the equipment and materials requested.
Without marking the work, teachers should give appropriate guidance to students to ensure their plans are safe and appropriate to carry out. If it is not, you can give appropriate feedback and ask them to improve their work.
Guidance on feedback is in Section 7.3 of the specification. Feedback is limited to an issue with the command work, an aspect of the criterion or assessment guidance that hasn’t been evidenced, or relate to a particular topic area of the specification. Centres should record what feedback they have provided in case a moderator requests it.
Students can reattempt and resubmit their work, but this shouldn’t be an iterative process. Give them their feedback, adequate supervised time to improve it in, and then take the work back in for marking. This should be enough, and helps manage workload for you and them.
We have lots of resources to ensure you’re marking to the same standard as our moderators:
- Understanding the assessment: examined and moderated
- Teacher guide: NEA
- Candidate style work for every NEA unit, at pass, merit and distinction level (available on Teach Cambridge, for use by teachers only)
- Our free, on-demand online training course for understanding the NEA (available on Teach Cambridge)
- Preparing for the NEA professional development sessions available each academic year as paid-for, live CPD (materials from previous events are available on Teach Cambridge)
Moderation questions
When do we submit?
What gets sent?
What happens at the moderation visit?
Most questions about moderation are covered in our NEA FAQs, but here are some key points:
- Centres will need to provide pass, merit, distinction results for every student, and we also need to know whether they have been achieved, not achieved, or not attempted. Keep a clear mark book, like the one we’ve provided. You’ll need to upload this with the sample for moderation.
- The student’s work and forms must be uploaded digitally on Submit for Assessment. Multiple documents are fine: just save them with good titles into a single, zipped folder.
- You can use our Unit Record Sheets (URS) to give more context about your marking to the moderator. This might be useful if you have had to intervene in any way.
- You can also use witness statements. If your student is missing anything in their written response, but you can ask them appropriate questions to clarify their understanding, you can include a written account of this for the moderator and award the marks.
For unit F182, you need to use teacher observation forms and risk assessment forms (available as a Word document with the set assignments on Teach Cambridge). Both the student and teacher need to “sign” the observation forms to confirm they are a true reflection of the activity that took place. A digital signature is fine.
Comments on the forms should be a brief account of what happened, and should relate to the task, the marking criteria and/or the assessment guidance as appropriate. All our candidate style work includes examples of completed forms.
Stay connected
If you have any questions, you can email us at science@ocr.org.uk or call us on 01223 553998. You can also sign up to subject updates to keep up-to-date with the latest news, updates and resources.
If you are considering teaching any of our qualifications, use our online form to let us know, so that we can help you with more information.
About the author
Amy joined Cambridge OCR in May 2022 and is a subject advisor for GCSE Sciences and Applied Science. Before that, Amy taught chemistry to 11-18 year olds for 16 years and was responsible for planning her school’s science schemes of learning. In addition to her teaching responsibilities, Amy mentored PGCE students, was responsible for the progress of KS5 science students, and is committed to improving diversity and inclusion in the sciences.
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