Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hey! So I'm going to do "How do fears change with age?" project and I have a few questions about it. My teacher wants me to do a project that is someething you can measure, and I'm not too sure how to put fear on a scale. How do you put feelings on a scale?

Hi,

It is hard to put a number on feelings. I think you would have to give people a questionnaire or show them images or videos and ask them to rate their fear on a scale of 1 (no fear) to 5 (max fear).

Since I'm a visual person, I would go with an images test. Think about images that are associated with fear or anxiety and put together a slide show on youtube that your volunteers can watch. Ask them to rate their fear factor for each one.

The tough part will be selecting images that show age-related differences. Obviously it will depend on which ages you plan to compare. A four year-old is going to have way different fear images from those of a forty year-old.

Do some googling about this subject. You may find some image sets already created that you can borrow from.

Hopefully some of the other experts can offer more suggestions for approaching this project.

Good luck!

Sybee