Extended Essay Topics: How to Choose One, by Subject

Extended Essay topics: start with a question, not a subject area

Most students who search for Extended Essay topics really need a research question. A topic is an area you find interesting. A research question is something you can answer, with evidence, in about 4,000 words. "Renewable energy" is a topic. "How far did feed-in tariffs explain the growth of rooftop solar in Germany between 2000 and 2012?" is a question.

Every example here is original: I wrote them to show the shape of a workable question, not to give you a list to copy. Treat a question you like as a pattern and rebuild it around something you can reach. The essay is registered under one Diploma subject, even on the interdisciplinary route, so choose from subjects you take or know well, and check with your school's EE coordinator that the subject is available. Our rubric guide explains how a good question earns marks under criterion A.

How to choose an Extended Essay topic: the narrowing funnel

Each cut makes the essay easier to finish and easier to argue.

Name the area. One line: what are you curious about? You will live with it for about 40 hours.
Find the evidence. List what you could really get hold of: data you can measure, texts you can read closely, documents, published datasets.
Narrow three ways. Limit the case, the period and the angle: one novel, one decade, one economic lens.
Add a verb that forces a judgement. "To what extent" and "how far" demand weighing. "Describe" and "outline" questions produce lists. Our command terms guide explains why.
Test it against the checklist below. If it fails two checks, narrow again before you read anything else.

From topic to question in two moves.

Weak and strong Extended Essay research questions

The weak versions are not wrong, only too wide, too vague or too easy to answer with a summary. Notice what changes: a case appears, a limit appears, and an argument becomes possible.

Weak	Stronger	What changed
How does social media affect teenagers?	To what extent does use of short-video apps explain changes in sleep reported by students in one school year group?	One group, one behaviour, one measurable outcome. Check ethics and consent rules with your school.
Was the Cold War important?	How far did the 1962 missile crisis change the way the United States and the Soviet Union used direct communication?	One event, one consequence, a judgement to weigh.
Why is Hamlet a good play?	How does the shifting use of soliloquy in Hamlet shape the audience's sense of the prince's trustworthiness?	A technique, a text and an effect you can argue for.
Can maths model nature?	How well does a logistic model fit the spread of one invasive plant species in published survey data?	A model, a dataset and a fit you can test.
Is inflation bad?	To what extent did exchange-rate movements, rather than wages, drive import-price inflation in one economy over a defined period?	Two competing explanations and a period.

Extended Essay topics by subject group

Three per group, written so each can be argued more than one way. Check the subject's own rules and your supervisor before committing.

Every group has a natural evidence base. Start from what you can actually reach.

Extended Essay topics for Language and Literature

To what extent does the first-person narration in one chosen novel make the narrator's account unreliable? (Close reading of a limited set of passages.)
How do two newspapers' headlines differ in framing one election result, and what does it suggest about their readers? (A small, defined corpus keeps it manageable.)
How does repetition in one poet's collected work build a sense of grief? (One technique across a set of texts.)

Extended Essay topics for Language Acquisition

Which features of spoken Hindi do learners from a Mandarin-speaking background find hardest, judged from recorded classroom speech? (Check consent and permissions for recordings.)
How far do target-language subtitles help intermediate learners follow a short film, compared with first-language subtitles?
To what extent has English borrowing changed everyday vocabulary in one community's social media posts? (A bounded sample.)

Extended Essay topics for Individuals and Societies

How far did the 1997 Asian financial crisis change monetary policy choices in one affected economy?
To what extent do changes in a city's bus fares explain changes in ridership over a defined period?
How effectively did one national government's school-meals policy reduce absenteeism, judged from published data?

Extended Essay topics for the Sciences

How does dissolved salt concentration affect the rate of osmosis in potato tissue, and where does a simple model stop working?
How does ramp angle change the speed of a rolling cylinder, solid or hollow, compared with the rolling-without-slipping prediction?
How does pH affect the antibacterial effect of one household disinfectant on a harmless, school-approved culture? (Needs lab permission and safe practice.)

For measurable-system ideas in your own science, the IA topic explorers can spark a pattern, even though an EE is a different task: Physics, Chemistry and Biology. For the practical side, our guide to uncertainties shows what an experimental EE must handle.

Extended Essay topics for Maths

How accurately can a simple recurrence model predict the long-term behaviour of a population with a fixed harvest rate?
To what extent do different rules for splitting a fixed sum fairly agree with each other in realistic cases?
How do the convergence speeds of two methods for approximating the same constant compare in practice?

Maths questions work when they compare, model or test something, which makes evaluation natural. See the Maths IA topic explorer for modelling ideas, and the GDC guide if your calculations rely on a calculator.

Extended Essay topics for the Arts

How did one choreographer's use of space change between an early and a late work? (Needs accessible recordings.)
To what extent does the colour palette in one film director's work create a consistent emotional pattern?
How does the structure of one piece of music change the listener's sense of tension? (Needs a score you can analyse.)

Interdisciplinary Extended Essay topics

The interdisciplinary pathway draws on two Diploma subjects, though the essay is still registered under one. Two subjects need not be equally weighted, but the question must need both lenses. Environmental systems and societies and the literature and performance course cannot be used in this pathway.

To what extent can economics and chemistry together explain why one city's recycling scheme succeeded or failed? (Costs and incentives from one, material properties from the other.)
How do physics and music together explain differences in the sound of two string instruments?
How far do history and literature together show how one event was remembered in the following decade?

The common failure is one lens with a passing mention of the other. Ask what each subject can do that the other cannot for your question.

A quick test before you commit to an Extended Essay topic

Check	Why it matters
Could a reasonable person disagree with your answer?	If not, it is a fact, not a question.
Can you name three sources or one dataset you can reach this month?	No evidence, no essay.
Does it contain a limit: a case, place, period or text?	It must finish in 4,000 words.
Can you imagine a paragraph weighing two explanations?	That is where criterion D comes from.
Does it fit your subject, and can your supervisor guide it?	Supervision is only a few hours.
Is it safe, ethical and allowed?	People, animals or hazards need school approval first.

In my experience since 2015 at Photon Academy, the students who struggle most chose a topic they loved but could not reach evidence for. A slightly less glamorous question with an accessible dataset beats a thrilling one that has no sources. A second pattern: students often discover their real question halfway through reading, so treat the first version as a draft and record the change, because it is exactly the material criterion E rewards.

For wording and sources, the Purdue OWL pages on conducting research and thesis statements are good outside reading, and the IB Extended Essay page has the official requirements.

Next: build the outline and respect the limit

Once you have a question, see what a plan looks like in our annotated Extended Essay examples and keep within the word count. The Extended Essay hub and the IA and EE guide cover the whole process. The IA and EE Coach can give feedback on a draft question, and it never writes any part of your essay; an EE draft check needs your school's OK.

Next step

Plan your essay with the criteria in mind

See how a good question, a method and a word budget fit together.

Annotated examples →

Extended Essay topics: how to choose one, by subject