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There are several different genres of research that science students can conduct. The type of research that a student is asked to do will depend a great deal on their age and on the purpose of the research. The most common forms of research conducted by students in elementary, middle and high school include background information research, experimental research and survey research.

Basic Research for Students

The most common form of research that students will conduct is basic background research. This type of research is going to uncover and summarize what is already known about the subject assigned to the student. This type of research is assigned to students of all ages. It generally requires an introduction, a literature review and a conclusion. Rarely do these research projects require student to analyze the information that they are collecting. However, the information that is organized in this type of research is focused on a thesis statement.

Teaching students how to conduct this type of research is fairly straight forward. Teachers will want to start by introducing students to ways to find sources of information in the library and online. They will also need to cover how to create a bibliography and how to properly cite authors and sources in their research paper. Finally the teacher will need to go over the formatting requirements for the report that is generated for this type of research.

Survey Research Protocols

A survey research project collects new information from a specific group of people. Usually this group of people has something in common, such as a common characteristic or a common experience. To conduct a survey research project students will need to construct a survey or questionnaire and they will need to interact with members in their test group. Information that is collected is analyzed and trends in the responses are identified and used to explain phenomenon that is related to the issue being studies. This type of research is focused by a hypothesis that is based on previous observations of the situation or group.

Teaching students how to conduct this type of research is slightly more difficult than teaching them how to conduct basic research. This is because a survey research project builds upon a basic research project. In fact a basic research project forms the foundation of the survey research. This research is what students use to create their hypothesis and to form their survey questions.

To teach the surveying skills teachers will need to run students through practice survey writing and interviewing drills. They will then need to teach students how to utilize statistics to analyze the data that they collect.

Experimental Research Projects

An experimental research project starts with a basic research project. The information gathered from this initial research is used to generate a hypothesis that predicts a cause and effect relationship between two variables. From here the student will need to design an experiment that tests the hypothesis.

Teaching this type of research is usually done before a science fair. It will include the demonstration of how to design, set-up and execute an original experiment. It will also include learning activities that explore how to collect, organize and interpret data.

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