Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

I'm not sure how to create my hypothesis for this science fair project. The hypothesis is due Tuesday and I don't know how I would make a hypothesis for this topic.

Hello,

Can you give us more details on your project? How are you going to measure the change? Your hypothesis should relate to the change you expect to see in your measurements relative to the age of the subjects.

I'm supposed to make a list of common fears and survey different age groups. I'm doing 10 people from each age group and I have 5 age groups and I'm going to find out what people are afraid of what fears from the list. And I'm not exactly sure what change I'm supposed to be expecting, so I don't have any idea what I should say for my hypothesis. Sorry is this makes no sense...

Hello there,

Your project seems to be a bit more exploratory than hypothesis driven. What is the main question you're trying to address? Do you want to see if people from different age groups have different fears? Do you think that as people get older, certain fears that they had as a child will slowly disappear? Have you done some research to see whether the age of a human subject is correlated with certain fears? As far as I know, I don't know of any fears that are only present in children and absent in adults, and vice versa. I could be wrong though, so other experts please chime in if you have a better idea. But as far as your project sounds right now, it may be a little difficult to come up with a clear hypothesis that can be tested.

Perhaps instead of using age as a parameter to group your test subjects, perhaps you can use other factors? For example, if you have subjects that have experienced or never experienced a traumatic experience in relation to a certain fear, are the subjects that have had the traumatic experience more likely to have that fear compared to people who have never had a traumatic experience? How are you going to measure the fear? Are you just going to ask your subjects if they fear that certain thing, or are you going to show them pictures depicting that fear and write down what you observe from their reactions?

Let us know more details and we'll certainly help you brainstorm.

Connie

Hi!

I think this might be a good source for what kind of fears you might expect in different age groups:

http://kidshealth.org/parent/emotions/f ... xiety.html#

Your hypothesis could even just be that fears change over time. Let us know if you have any more ideas for a hypothesis or any questions that you have.