Scientific Questionnaire MiniPoster
By Luka Zrnic & Chris Sheldon 6th
Question
Does the amount of hours studying vary by grade level in high school?
Hypothesis
Students in 11th and 12th grade will have to study a greater number of hours than students in 9th and 10th grade.
Type of Investigation
This investigation is one of a comparative nature.
Parts of the Experiment
Independent Variable- The grade in which the students are in
Dependent Variable- The amount of time spent studying
Control Group- None
Experimental Group- Ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth graders
Data Table
Graphs
Analysis
As grade levels progress, or increase, students do spend more time studying or tending to schoolwork. The mean amount of hours spent studying for students in eleventh and twelfth grade came out to around 3.53 hours each night, while student in the lower grades of ninth and tenth only studied around 1.73 hours a night having 2SEM(Standard Mean of Error) being 0.737 and 0.402 respectively. As it is seen there is difference in the average amount studied, not not mention that once a TTEST was run on the two sets of data (each containing 13 students), the p value was 0.0001. Clearly the fact that grade levels higher had 3.53 mean hours versus 1.73 for the lower ones show that hours studied were lower for those not so advanced in their high school career. This is confirmed by the fact that the p value of the TTEST was 0.0001 which is significantly smaller than the 0.05 benchmark that signifies if the independent variable has an effect. This is very likely due to the fact that as one progresses through high school more advanced and conjointly challenging courses such as AP (Advanced Placement) and IB (International Baccalaureate) level classes are offered. These kinds of courses generally take a vastly greater amount of dedication and work than their lower level Pre-Ap counterpart, which are more common among lowerclassmen, and thus upperclassmen study more at home per night.
Conclusion
The stated hypothesis for this experiment was supported. As grade levels progress, or increase, students do spend more time studying or tending to schoolwork.
Sources of Error/Inaccuracies
Throughout the investigation there could have been a few factors leading to inaccurate final results. The greatest source of error in the experiment that was not accounted for was the fact that this investigation was conducted in the first week that school started, meaning that students have less work assigned, and thus the data would be inaccurate. In addition to this students were expected to estimate the amount of mean homework they had per week, rather than providing solid hard fact evidence. Therefore, this "estimation", not being one of exact time measurement, could ultimately lead to skewed data. Lastly, a final error, which presented itself, lied in the fact that the students surveyed did not list all of the difficulty of the courses, thus the researchers were unaware as to who took more challenging courses and who did not, this was simply assumed by grade level.
Bibliography
Martin, Jennifer. "Biostats: SD and error bars" video. August 2014. Web.
Martin, Jennifer. "Graphing" video. August 2014. Web.
Martin, Jennifer. "Bio stats: t-test and correlation" video. August 2014. Web.
Martin, Jennifer. "writing CER analysis". August 2014