6
Marks available — the easiest in the entire IB
3
Reflections required — early, mid, and final stage
500
Words max per reflection — keep it focused
The RPPF — Reflections on Planning and Progress Form — is the most important part of Criterion E and the easiest 6 points you will ever get. The main point of the RPPF is to ensure you've actually gone through the process of creating a research paper such as the EE.
Reflection is the process by which students recapture their experience and think about its impact on them as learners. The reflection sessions give students the opportunity to reflect on their engagement with the research process, consider the effectiveness of their choices, and re-examine their ideas and decide whether changes are needed.
What Your RPPF Should Show
Challenges
What obstacles did you encounter during research and writing?
Problem-Solving
What initial ideas did you have for solving those challenges?
Adaptation
What solutions didn't work? What did you learn? How did you adapt?
Growth
How did you grow as a researcher through this process?
The Three Reflections
Reflection 1 — Early Stage
Why you chose this topic, how you arrived at your RQ, what challenges you faced in focusing, what your supervisor suggested and how you responded.
Reflection 2 — Mid Stage
How your understanding has evolved, whether you adjusted your RQ, what surprised you during research, what methodology challenges you faced.
Reflection 3 — Final Stage
What you're most proud of, what you'd do differently, how this process changed the way you think about research.
Example: The Process in Words
John's Natural Thought Process
Let's take our earlier example. John went from a broad RQ to a focused one — but what if he didn't use AI? What if he just used trial and error to focus his RQ? This is the kind of thinking your RPPF should capture.
John started with: "To what extent did social media influence voter psychology and election outcomes in the 2024 US elections?" and needed to refine it into something researchable. Here's what that natural thought process looks like:
"Okay, so here we talk about social media and election outcomes. Can we be more specific in terms of both? Um, I don't know, maybe not.
When I say social media, I'm talking about the people who produce content on social media and how that affects the user's decision-making.
So basically how users felt after reacting to the content made by creators. Right — but how do we measure that? Is it even possible to measure that? Something like sentiment?
Well, we could use interactions — like the more views it had? But no, that doesn't work, because anything can pop up on your feed; it doesn't mean you have a particular sentiment over it.
Oh wait, what about likes? Likes can definitely account for some sentiment.
So could we find some sort of connection between the likes and engagement of a video and what a person voted for?
How can we get the data of who voted for whom? Well, someone told me they release it after an election every time.
So I need some tool to analyse both sets of data. Uh, let me open my textbook!"
So you get the idea. This would be the average person's thought process. Your RPPF is this, but more formal — the thinking and creative process that goes behind your work. Your RPPF can show whether your work is genuine or not.
Turning Thoughts Into a Formal Reflection
The way you would write the reflection above would be something like this:
"I wanted the best possible RQ to help me analyse the information at hand and the correlation that I wanted to showcase between social media and the subsequent influence on voters. I initially formulated the RQ 'To what extent did social media influence voter psychology and election outcomes in the 2024 US elections.' I was excited since I believed it was a strong start and proposed it to my teacher. My teacher, however, believed the lack of detailing could completely derail me later on during the analysis. The generality of the RQ didn't seem detrimental to me because I believed the RQ was quite straightforward and easy to research. However, I did formulate other RQs to see which would better suit the purpose of the research paper and the consequent findings..."
— Sample Reflection 1 — turning your natural thought process into formal writing
See what happened? You're basically documenting the same thinking process — the adversities, why certain challenges came up, and how you approached them. The reflections show the IB your problem-solving skills as well as your mindset towards creating the EE.
Tip
You have an opportunity to showcase the adversities you faced in the process and your approach to overcoming them, and the back-and-forth involved in creating a paper such as yours. The cycle is: what went wrong → what you tried → what you learned → how you grew.
Key Takeaways
- The RPPF is worth 6 marks — the easiest in the IB
- Write three reflections: early, mid, and final stage
- Show the process: challenge → attempt → failure → learning → growth
- Don't overthink it — be genuine about your research journey