Related Links

• Science Fair Project Guide

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• Designing a Survey

Project Summary

Difficulty	4
Time required	Average (about one week)
Prerequisites	None
Material Availability	Readily available
Cost	Very Low (under $20)
Safety	No issues

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Abstract

Objective

Determine if males and females are equally likely to play video and computer games and if they play the same types of games.

Introduction

What kinds of video games do you like to play? Adventure games where you control a character who has to save the world? Racing games where you drive fast cars? Or what about puzzle games, like Tetris, where your fingers fly over the controls as you try to beat the computer? There are many different genres (types) of video games. The table below lists some of the most common genres. Even if you are a big fan of video games, you probably don't like every genre! Which do you think are the most popular genres? Do you think there are some genres that males prefer and others that females prefer, or do males and females play the same types of video games?

Video Game Genre	Examples of Games in the Genre
Shooting	Halo, Call of Duty
Fighting	Street Fighter, Soul Caliber
Racing	Mario Kart, Gran Tourismo
Platform	Super Mario, Jak and Daxter
Simulation	The Sims, Sim City
Adventure	Zelda, Metroid
Role-Playing (RPG)	Pokemon, Final Fantasy
Strategy	Fire Emblem, Advanced Wars
Sports	Madden Football, FIFA Soccer
Puzzle	Tetris, Bejeweled
Music/Dance	Dance Dance Revolution, Guitar Hero

To discover the answers to these questions, you'll design a survey to give to your friends and classmates about if they play video or computer games and if so, what kinds of video and computer games they play. A survey is a way of gathering information about specific questions. In this science fair project, the questions you'll be answering are: "Are males and females equally likely to play video games?" and "Among kids who do play video games, are there gender (males versus female) differences in what genres of games they play?". These may seem like silly questions, but they're the kind of data that video game companies like to know in order to decide what kinds of games they are going to create and how many sales they could potentially make. So, pretend you are a video game marketing strategist and survey your potential buyers!

Terms, Concepts and Questions to Start Background Research

• Genre
• Survey
• Gender
• Structured questions (also called fixed-response questions)

Questions

• The table in the Introduction lists some of the most common video game genres. Can you make a bigger list? What kinds of games belong in each genre?
• What kinds of video game genres do you like to play?
• If you look back at lists of the best-selling video games from different months (available in some video game magazines, both in print and online), which genres sell the best?

Bibliography

This website will give you more information about the different types of video and computer games and how they can be placed in genres.

• Wikipedia Contributors. (2008, August 18). Video Game Genres. Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved August 19, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Video_game_genres&oldid=232655930

This site describes five steps for writing a good survey:

• ThinkQuest Team. (2001). Your Guide to Writing Surveys. Retrieved August 19, 2008, from http://library.thinkquest.org/C0122040/disp.php3?page=content&topic=action&subtopic=surveys

This website offers help with creating graphs:

• National Center for Education Statistics. (n.d.). Create a Graph. Retrieved August 19, 2008, from http://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/CreateAGraph/default.aspx

Materials and Equipment

• Volunteers (minimum of 15 males and 15 females, but more of each is better). Note: All volunteers should be within two years of age from one another and should not be selected based on whether or not you know they play video or computer games. Your classmates at school or teammates on a sports team may be good sources for volunteers.
• Survey (at least 30; as many copies as you have volunteers); see the Experimental Procedure for details on making the survey.
• Pencils (at least 30; as many as you have volunteers)
• Lab notebook
• Graph paper

Experimental Procedure

In this science fair project, you will survey males and females of the same age about the genres of video games they play to see if there are differences in the types of games females and males enjoy.

Designing the Survey

1. To start this science fair project, you will need to design a survey. For an overview about how to design surveys, read the Designing a Survey help page.
   1. For this science fair project you'll have structured (also called fixed-response) questions. This means that your volunteers must choose from the answers available on the survey paper and can't add more information. This type of survey is easier to analyze.
2. There are several pieces of information you want to get from each volunteer. Design a question for each of these pieces of information. Here is the information you are trying to collect:
   1. Age
   2. Gender
   3. Whether or not the volunteers play video games
   4. If they do play video games, what genres do they play
3. Below is an example of a survey:

   Please write your age here ________________
   Please answer each question by circling your answer.
   Are you a male or a female?	Male   Female
   Do you play video or computer games?	Yes    No
   If you do play video or computer games, please circle ALL the types of games you play, below:
   Shooting	Fighting
   Racing	Platform
   Adventure	Simulation
   Role-Playing (RPG)	Strategy
   Sports	Puzzle
   Music/Dance	Other

4. You might want to add examples of each video game genre to your survey (like in the table in the Introduction) so the volunteers know what kinds of games are part of each genre.
5. Once you've designed your survey, have an adult proofread it for you.
6. Make enough copies of your survey to give each volunteer one (at least 30 copies).
   1. You can either photocopy a handwritten survey or print multiple copies of a survey that you made on the computer.

Collecting and Analyzing the Data

1. Give each volunteer a pencil and a survey. Have them fill out the survey and return it to you when they are done. Note: Remember to make sure all your volunteers are around the same age (no more than 2 years apart). This way you'll be testing only gender, and not other variables, like age.
2. When you have all your surveys filled out (at least 30, but more is better), you are ready to start analyzing the responses.
3. Make a data table in your lab notebook to tabulate (count up) how many females and males gave each response. Below is an example of a data table:

   	Males	Females
   Number of survey responses:
   Number of volunteers who play games:
   Number of volunteers who chose each of the following genres:
   Shooting
   Fighting
   Racing
   Platform
   Adventure
   Simulation
   Role-playing (RPG)
   Strategy
   Sports
   Puzzle
   Music/Dance

4. Calculate what percentage of the males and what percentage of the females you surveyed play video or computer games.
   1. To get the percentage of males, divide the number of males who responded "yes" they play games by the total number of males surveyed and multiply the answer by 100 to make it a percentage. See Equation 1, below, for details.

      Equation 1:

      % males who play video games =

      (# of males who play video games) (total # of males surveyed)

      × 100

   2. Do the same calculation for the females.
   3. Make a pie chart or bar graph showing your results. You can make the graph by hand or use a website like Create a Graph to make the graph on the computer and print it.
   4. Are males and females equally likely to play video games?
5. Calculate what percentage of male and female video game players play each genre.
   1. For this calculation, only use the volunteers who have responded that they do play video games.
   2. For example, to get the percentage of females who play racing games, divide the total number of females who circled "Racing" as one of the genres they play, by the total number of females who said they play video games. Multiply the answer by 100 to make it a percentage. See Equation 2, below, for details.

      Equation 2:

      % females who play racing games =

      (# of females who circled racing games) (# of females who play video games)

      × 100

   3. In the end you should have two percentages for each genre, one for males and one for females. Graph the percentages on a bar graph, with one color for males and another color for females.
   4. Are there some game genres that are mostly played by just females or just males? Which genres are played by both genders?

Variations

• Do people of the same gender (for example just females) but of different ages play the same genres of video games? Design a survey to find out. You'll want to make groups of ages; for example, females under the age of 12, females ages 13-18, females ages 19-25, and females age 26 and over.
• How does age affect the number of hours per week people spend playing video games? Design a survey to find out. Try analyzing your data as a whole, and as just females or just males.

• For more science project ideas in this area of science, see Video & Computer Games Project Ideas.

Credits

Sandra Slutz, PhD, Science Buddies

Last edit date: 2008-10-07 10:00:00

Career Focus

If you like this project, you might enjoy exploring careers in Video & Computer Games.

Multimedia Artist or Animator If you've ever watched a cartoon, played a video game, or seen an animated movie, you've seen the work of multimedia artists and animators. People in these careers use computers to create the series of pictures that form the animated images or special effects seen in movies, television programs, and computer games.

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