Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

My daughter is a roller-coaster enthusiast and would like to do a Science Fair project involving the psychology of roller-coaster riders (she could poll people while waiting in line).

One idea we have is the following, and we would greatly appreciate any input that would assist us in how to go about this:

***Do roller-coaster enthusiasts have at least one important person in their life who has positively influenced/encouraged this interest? (Or did they at one point in their life have such a person?)

Any ideas on how best to execute a project like this? Your assistance would be most greatly appreciated! Thank you in advance!

Hello Eye-on-Heaven and welcome to the Ask an Expert forum. We will try to help you with your proposed project.

You have a very interesting idea, but doing studies with people presents some unique challenges.

When proposing a science fair study that involves humans directly, you must follow the International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) rules and get approval from the Scientific Review Board before beginning the project. This can all seem rather intimidating but the rules were written to protect people from harm. The Institutional Review Board is the group that oversees the regulations for any studies involving human subjects and you can learn more about this by clicking on the following link: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... ects.shtml

From what you said I gather that you are thinking of posing a series of questions to the people who are in line waiting to get on the roller coaster. While I think this could be done, you would have to get permission from the operators of the park where the coaster is located to ask questions of their riders. Some park owners might be OK with this, but some might not.

Your question about the psychology of coaster riders is intriguing. Why do they like to ride them and how did they start? Writing the questions to get meaningful information from people is an art that pollsters are still perfecting. I would suggest that you do a search for how to make a good questionnaire. Here's a wiki site that I found that should give you some ideas for how to approach this: http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Questi ... nstruction

Good luck with this and please keep us posted on your progress. We are here to answer any more questions that you have and to offer suggestions.

Best wishes,
SciB

Hello Eye-on-Heaven,

What a unique project idea! SciB has already given you some excellent advice. I just wanted to direct you to the Science Buddies resources for survey-based projects:
https://www.sciencebuddies.org/blog/201 ... eysays.php
https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... rvey.shtml

Please post again (in this same thread) if you have any more questions!

Heather

Hello Eye-on-Heaven,

You've received great advice from both SciB and heatherL. I'm a little intrigued by this chosen topic. Do you plan to find a correlation between roller-coaster riders and if they have been influenced by others to pursue this interest? Will you perhaps compare this with those who have never rode a roller coaster and have not had a person encourage he/she to try it? Keep in mind of a hypothesis that is able to be proven right or wrong. But a very interesting topic.

Best of luck!