Skills of Inquiry, Reflection and Analysis
This section covers Skills of Inquiry, Reflection and Analysis, the domain that tests how you ask questions, evaluate sources, build arguments and reflect on experience.
Core skills
- Inquiry: formulate a focused question; identify primary and secondary sources; check provenance, date, audience and bias; triangulate evidence.
- Analysis: distinguish claim, evidence and inference; identify assumptions; evaluate validity; spot fallacies such as ad hominem, straw man, false dilemma, slippery slope and anecdote.
- Reflection: describe, analyse, evaluate and plan, as in the Gibbs cycle; connect experience to concepts rather than only reporting feelings.
- Research ethics: consent, anonymity, sensitivity and no fabrication.
Worked example
Claim: 'Religion causes violence.' Reasoning: unpack 'religion', 'causes' and 'violence'; ask for evidence; compare cases; identify other factors such as politics, economics and ethnicity; avoid the reverse fallacy that religion causes peace. A strong answer distinguishes correlation from causation, defines terms and uses a source. A weak answer replies with one anecdote or a counter-insult.
Traps
- Treating anecdote as proof.
- False balance: treating expert consensus and a fringe view as equal.
- Ad hominem attacks.
- Confusing correlation with causation.
- Reflection that only describes feelings without analysis.