Week 10

A lot has happened since winter break in terms of my research project. I finalized some details regarding my question. I also finalized my survey with reworded questions and a chart to help the surveyors in answering the questions. After finishing the IRB paper, I have approvals from Mr. Kelly and Dr. Chambers. My next step hopefully is to get my survey approved by Mr. Kelly and to get to survey his AP World Class. His periods are 3 and 6 that I can survey. I am wondering if I will have enough data if I only survey these two periods of his. Also I need to work fast and try to send out my permission slips quickly so I can give my surveys to the sophomores soon. If this a not enough, I will attempt to survey other classes. Another teacher I am thinking about asking is Ms. Andrade. On Thursday I will ask Mr. Kelly if I can survey his class. And maybe hopefully I can hand out the consent forms on Friday so they can do it over the weekend.

I have also collected additional sources to help with my research. I found two more sources explaining the importance of self esteem. These sources discuss these reasons but also state what self esteem is and who is experiencing lower self esteem levels than others. These sources will help with my research by explaining the significance of my findings. I also have found sources pertaining especially to youth sports organizations. Examples of these include YMCA sports, Little League Baseball, and AYSO Soccer. I want to see what these sports are teaching the young athletes so I can see if there is a correlation to this and self esteem levels. Now I am focusing more on developing factors of children and young adults. My purpose in doing this is to see how vital a role self esteem plays in kids and their growth as humans.

Weeks 5-9

During these five weeks I have done a some research. I continue to find sources to help me and my research project. We have read about surveys. They can play a vital role in our research and can help us a lot. We also learned how to write a good survey. We learned about what type of questions to ask and how to analyze our data to help us and to interpret it correctly. We must use questions that will help us answer our question. I also have been looking up new course for my question. Lately I have been busy with college applications and early action and because of this in recent weeks I have not done as much in my research than I would hope. However I will try to balance it out. We also learned about our first draft and we need to get started on that soon.

9/14/18

This week in research we looked at two different accounts on the topic of vaccines and if they cause autism. We are still on credibility and seeing what sources we have and if they are credible. So for our assignment we looked at a news interview and an academic article. In the news interview, the lady seemed not credible. Her son had autism and then vaccines cured it. She seems very biased and blames pharmacists and scientists and money on why it is not public yet. The article was more credible. It was written by two pediatricians and experts in vaccines. They did a starightforward approach and it made sense. It was very organized and had a lot of information. I learned a lot from the article and hopefully I can use what I my own research paper. This week for my own research paper I am still looking for more sources. These sources I’m focusing on childhood obesity and seeing different ways that’s have been taken to try to fix the problem. I have learned a lot from my sources and hopefully I can learn more.

9/7/18

This week in research we learned about expert advisors. These are people who are experts in our field of interest. They can be drawn from our school, such as faculty members, our community, businesses, or from higher forms of education, such as college professors. Expert advisors play an important role and can help us a lot in our project. They can give us advice on a certain topic and about our research project. They can also answer any question we may have on our topic. Wether it is on the field we are researching or on a method of research, we can ask them for help. When we need help, we could ask the expert advisors for advice. We also talked about the maybe obstacles of talking to an expert advisors. There were many but the most common one was that they are too busy and don’t respond to us or that the advice they give us does not help us. It would help if we found an expert advisor.

Week 3  8/30/18

In Chapter 2 Part 1 of Practical Research, it talks about many important details for choosing a topic and picking a question. It gives good advice on how to pick questions. The question should be important and make a difference in some way. It should also advance knowledge in that field, to make a difference. Next the book goes over what we should not do when coming up with our rewatch project. This includes problems for our own self enlightenment, problems that compare only two sets of data, and the answer could not be merely just a “yes” or “no”. Then the book gives us tips on how to pick a question. Some of the tasks are easier than others. For example, some simple tips include choosing a topic we are interested in, something that is realistic, and reading different literature about the topics. Some of the more difficult of the tips include getting advice from an expert or attending professional conferences. Nonetheless, each tip is important and is helping me choosing a question for my research project. After, this chapter also talks about starting the research project. First it says it state the problem clearly and completely. This is important as it lets the reader know what our question is about and that they know what to except from our project. Then we must think about the real world implications of our topic and how it could benefit someone by reading it. We should also talk as concisely as possible because we need to give a lot of information on our papers. We should also state a problem with an open mind and hypothesize about our question. Lastly we should edit our work. This part of the chapter ends by talking about how we should also use subtopics in our over reaching question to help us in our projects.  

Week 2   8/26/18

This week we went over the research paper titled, “The Modern Mythical Place”. It was very long but it was worth the time to read. The first thing I read was the abstract. It really set up a good summary of the student’s paper. Then I read the introduction. It was a good intro to the paper and it really made the reader know what the rest of the paper was going to be about. The author also used many varying sources. The author did a good job not only including the sources but synthesizing them and explaining them. The student made sure to include his/her own tone and voice and it was nice. The conclusion was also well said and summarized the whole research project. One thing I would change is that sometimes I did not understand what the author was trying to say. When doing our research reports, it is important to make sure what we are saying is clear and understandable to the reader. One thing I liked were the pictures the author included. I felt like it really helped with his topic and with his research.  

AP Research

This is the first week of school and I am trying to figure out what my topic and question is going to be about. In class Michelle talked to us and it was very helpful. I found out what a gap in research is and an outline for the year. As of now, I want to do something regarding sports, food, or family.