Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

My daughter is wanting to do a science fair project about dreams. She’s done the background on what dreams are, theories on why we dream but we’re struggling with the project portion. She’s decided to give out a questionnaire about people’s dreams and she thinks she would like to compare differences in adults’ and kids’ dream content in her “hypothesis”Would a survey asking about topics of dreams, frequency of nightmares be an ok “experiment” portion? Her current question/hypothesis is “I think kids dream about friends and animals more and that adults have fewer nightmares but more stress dreams”

That sounds like a fun project, and she’s off to a great start! Yes, a survey asking about dream topics and the frequency of nightmares is a perfectly fine experiment for her science fair!

To help her focus here is a simple way to shape her project. The research question could be something like "Do children dream more about friends and animals compared to adults?", "Do kids and adults dream about different things?", or "Do kids have more nightmares than adults?".

The hypothesis could be along the lines of "Children report more dreams involving friends and animals, while adults will report more stress-related dreams and fewer nightmares."

The survey can have questions such as ->
How often do you remember your dreams?
Do your dreams have friends, animals, school, or work in them?
How often do you have nightmares?
Do you have dreams that feel stressful or scary?

Other Tips!
Try to ask the same number of kids and adults so it’s a fair comparison.

I recommend looking at the sections in the project guide related to identifying variables and writing the hypothesis statement. You can find those in step 3 here: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... fic-method

You will also find more information on conducting survey-based experiments in the "Sociology & Human Behavior" section of this resource: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... references

Amy
Science Buddies