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• Science Fair Project Guide

Project Summary

Difficulty	3  –  4
Time required	Short (several days)
Prerequisites	None
Material Availability	Readily available
Cost	Very Low (under $20)
Safety	No issues

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Objective

In this experiment you will find out if more students like their teacher in younger grades than in older grades.

Introduction

Most students like their teachers. However, they may not always say so. Peer pressure may keep a student from expressing how they really feel. How do the attitudes of students towards teachers vary in your school? There are some stereotypical attitudes you can test in this experiment. Will younger students tend to like their teachers more than older students? Will girls tend to like their teachers more than boys? Is there a particular grade level where students like their teachers the most?

In this experiment, you will be asking other students from your school if they like their teacher. But in order to get meaningful results and to look for trends that can test the questions above, you will need to collect more information than that. To collect the information you will make a survey. Your survey should include your main question, "Do you like your teacher?" and any other information you would like to gather for your study. Some examples of other questions to ask are:

• gender (male or female)
• age (date of birth)
• grade level (K, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th...12th)
• school (if you can take your survey to another school)

Your survey should be clear and easy to read. Remember that if you want to include young students who are in Kindergarten, they may be just learning to read! For very young students who cannot read, you may need to give the survey by reading it to each student and writing down the answers for them. You will also need to get permission from other teachers at your school if you intend on giving the survey during class time.

Terms, Concepts and Questions to Start Background Research

To do this type of experiment you should know what the following terms mean. Have an adult help you search the internet, or take you to your local library to find out more!

• survey
• attitude
• stereotypes
• trend

• Will younger students like their teacher more than older students?
• Will girls like their teacher more than boys?
• How can surveys be used to collect information for a scientific study?

Bibliography

• Here at the Scholastic "Kids USA Survey" you can browse through some sample surveys to see what kinds of questions they ask and how kids answer them:
  Scholastic, 2006. "Kids USA Survey," Scholastic Inc. [accessed August 15, 2006]
  http://teacher.scholastic.com/kidusasu/
• This site describes five steps in writing a good survey:
  ThinkQuest Team, 2001. "Your Guide to Writing Surveys," ThinkQuest. [accessed August 16, 2006]
  http://library.thinkquest.org/C0122040/disp.php3?page=content&topic=action&subtopic=surveys

Materials and Equipment

• pencils
• paper
• copy machine
• clipboards

Experimental Procedure

1. The first step is to design your survey form. It should be easy to read and understand. Here is an example of a survey for this type of study:

   Please answer each question by circling your answer:
   Grade Level	K     1     2     3     4     5
   Are you a boy or a girl?	boy     girl
   Do you like your teacher? Answer:	yes     sometimes     no
   How old are you? (write in answer)	I am ______ years old.

2. Make several copies of your survey to pass out to subjects. For your study to yield data that is reliable, you will need to survey many people from each study group. You should survey at least 50 students from each age group (if you are testing the effect of age) or gender (if you are testing the effect of gender) for your study.
3. Schedule a time with a teacher to bring your survey to the class for students to take. Or give the survey before school, during lunch time, or after school. Provide participants with a pencil and clipboard to make the survey easy to fill out.
4. Collect the surveys and keep them in a folder until you have enough participants for each study group.
5. Make a data table for your results to tabulate the data one variable at a time. Here is a sample table for the grade level variable:

   Do you like your teacher? Answer:	Yes	Sometimes	No
   Kindergarten
   1st
   2nd
   3rd
   4th
   5th

6. Now make a bar graph of your results to analyze your data. Which groups like their teacher the most?

Variations

• As children grow, their attitudes towards their parents also change. You can conduct a study on the attitudes of students towards their parents. Will you see similar trends?
• You can conduct this type of study with any kind of preference you can think of. Will young students or older students prefer the same kind of music? Will boys or girls like the food in the school cafeteria the most? You can ask about TV shows, books, sports, food, almost anything!

• For more science project ideas in this area of science, see Sociology Project Ideas.

Credits

Sara Agee, Ph.D., Science Buddies

Last edit date: 2006-10-13 20:00:00

Career Focus

If you like this project, you might want to think about career opportunities in Sociology.

Any time there is more than one person in a room, there is potential for a social interaction to occur or for a group to form. Sociologists study these interactions—how and why groups and societies form, and how outside events like health issues, technology, and crime affect both the societies and the individuals. If you already like to think about how people interact as individuals and in groups, then you're thinking like a sociologist! Learn more about this career: Sociologist.