plumiSampling: OCR A‑Level Biology A questions
OCR A-Level Biology A past-paper questions on 4.2.1.2 Sampling, 2016–2025, with mark schemes and examiner’s reports where available.
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Q18(a)(i)
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All 19 questions on Sampling, as a list
- June 2025, Paper 2, Q18(a)(i) (1 mark): State why sampling is necessary when measuring the abundance of organisms in a habitat. [1]
- June 2025, Paper 2, Q18(a)(ii) (2 marks): Explain why it is important that sampling is random. [2]
- June 2025, Paper 2, Q18(c)(iii) (2 marks): Describe how the students should select their sampling areas for steps 1 and 6. [2]
- June 2025, Paper 2, Q18(c)(iv) (4 marks): Suggest two improvements that the students could make to step 2 of their method. For each improvement explain how that would increase the validity of the result
- June 2025, Paper 2, Q18(c)(v) (2 marks): Suggest and explain one limitation with step 7 of the students’ method. [2]
- June 2025, Paper 2, Q19(b)(i) (1 mark): It is important not to disturb the burrows and there is not enough money avai
- June 2024, Paper 3, Q2(a) (4 marks): A student plans to sample the plant species in the area shown below to assess the area’s species biodiversity. Grassland River Grassland with shrubs and bushes
- June 2024, AS Paper 2, Q1(a)(i) (1 mark): Name the type of sampling method used in a transect line. [1]
- June 2024, AS Paper 2, Q1(b) (1 mark): The students then used a sweep net to sample animals in two different parts of a river. They did this by holding the sweep net in the water and at the same time
- November 2021, Paper 2, Q13 (1 mark): Moving North from a large solitary tree in the school field, some students studied changes in plant species. They laid a tape measure due North from the base of
- November 2021, AS Paper 2, Q5(a)(i) (3 marks): Explain how a pitfall trap can be set up and used to sample invertebrate biodiversity. [3]
- November 2021, AS Paper 2, Q5(b)(i) (2 marks): Suggest two improvements you could make to these instructions. Improvement 1 Improvement 2 [2]
- November 2021, AS Paper 2, Q5(b)(ii) (4 marks): Results of the four most abundant species from the study are shown in the graph below. 80 Key: 70 heather crowberry 60 bracken 50 cotton grass Percentage 40 cov
- November 2020, Paper 3, Q5(a) (3 marks): The ecologists sampled the area to estimate insect biodiversity. Describe how the ecologists should choose the number and locations of their samples to ensure t
- November 2020, AS Paper 1, Q13 (1 mark): A student is investigating species richness of plants along a sand dune from the sea edge moving inland. They are testing the hypothesis that ‘species richness
- June 2018, Paper 3, Q5(c)(ii) (3 marks): Suggest how the scientist could achieve the following during their investigation: Sample all stages of succession in the habitat Minimise sampling bias Sample i
- June 2018, AS Paper 1, Q25(d)(ii) (3 marks): For this investigation, the students randomly selected leaves from ten downy birch trees at varying distances from the river. Suggest three ways in which the st
- June 2018, AS Paper 2, Q6(a)(ii) (1 mark): Name a piece of equipment that you could use for the random sampling of the plants shown in Table 6. [1]
- June 2017, AS Paper 2, Q5(a)(v) (1 mark): State one variable that scientists should control when carrying out surveys such as this. [1]
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