Extended Essay Topics and Research Questions

Topic first, question second

A topic is an area you find interesting. A research question is something you can answer, with evidence, in about 4,000 words. Most people searching for extended essay topics really need the second thing, and the gap between the two is where essays go wrong. "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.

Everything below is original: example questions we have written to show the shape of a workable question, not a list to copy from. If a question here appeals to you, treat it as a pattern and rebuild it around something you can actually reach. The essay is registered under one Diploma subject, even on the interdisciplinary route, so choose from the subjects you take or know well, and check with your school's EE coordinator that the subject is available to you.

Turning a topic into a research question

Name the areaOne line: what are you curious about? Keep it honest, because you will live with it for about 40 hours.
Find the evidenceList what you could really get your hands on: data you can measure, texts you can read closely, documents, interviews you are allowed to do, published datasets.
Narrow three waysLimit the case, the period and the angle. A single novel, a decade, one economic lens. Each cut makes the essay easier to finish and easier to argue.
Add a verb that forces a judgementQuestions that begin with "how far", "to what extent" or "which factor" demand weighing. "Describe" and "outline" questions produce lists.
Test it against the checklist belowIf it fails two or more checks, narrow it again before you read anything else.

Weak and strong questions side by side

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 the 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 before collecting data from people.)
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, and a clear 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 and evaluate.
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 to test them in.

Example research questions by subject group

Three per group, written so that each can be argued more than one way. Each carries a short note on how the question earns its keep.

Studies in language and literature

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

Language acquisition

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

Individuals and societies

How far did the 1997 Asian financial crisis change monetary policy choices in one affected economy? Economics or history lens, with a clear before and after.
To what extent do changes in a city's bus fares explain changes in ridership over a defined period? Published transport data plus an elasticity argument.
How effectively did one national government's school-meals policy reduce absenteeism, judged from published data? Weighs the policy against other possible causes.

Sciences

How does the concentration of dissolved salt affect the rate of osmosis in potato tissue, and where does a simple model stop working? Own experiment, with processing and evaluation built in.
How does the angle of a ramp change the speed of a rolling cylinder, solid or hollow, compared with the rolling-without-slipping prediction? A prediction you can test and criticise.
How does pH affect the antibacterial effect of one household disinfectant on a harmless, school-approved culture? Needs lab permission and safe practice from your school.

Mathematics

How accurately can a simple recurrence model predict the long-term behaviour of a population with a fixed harvest rate? Mathematics as the subject, with a model to evaluate.
To what extent do different rules for splitting a fixed sum fairly agree with each other in realistic cases? Compares methods, which makes evaluation natural.
How do the convergence speeds of two methods for approximating the same constant compare in practice? Calculation plus argument.

The arts

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

Interdisciplinary (two subjects)

The interdisciplinary route draws on two Diploma subjects, but the essay is still registered under one. The best questions need both lenses, not one lens with a mention of the other.

To what extent can economics and environmental science together explain why one city's recycling scheme succeeded or failed? Costs and incentives from one subject, material flows from the other.
How do physics and music together explain differences in the sound of two string instruments? Wave behaviour plus a musical judgement.
How far do history and literature together show how one event was remembered in the decade after it? Documents from one, texts from the other.

A quick test before you commit

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?
Does the question contain a limit: a case, a place, a period or a text?
Can you imagine a paragraph that weighs two explanations against each other?
Does it fit your subject, and would your supervisor be able to guide it?
Is it safe, ethical and allowed? Anything involving people, animals or hazardous materials needs your school's approval first.

Your question can still change a little as you read. Talk it through with your supervisor in the first reflection session, and see how the criteria will judge it in our criteria explained guide. When you are ready to plan, the annotated outlines show how a question turns into a section plan with word budgets.

Extended Essay topics and research questions