Sociology Project Ideas

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Do you ever say you like to go somewhere, and your friend says, "Yuck, that's for girls!" or "Ewww, that's for boys!" Do this experiment to find out if there are some places that girls like to go more than boys, or vice versa. I am sure you like your teacher, and are quite the teacher's pet! But how do other students in your school feel about their teacher? Will younger students like their teacher more than older students? What other trends can you investigate? What motivates you to clean your room/mow the lawn/wash the dishes (substitute your own responsibility at home)? What motivates you to do something you really like to do? Or think about this: you'd like to get your younger brother or sister to do you a favor. What strategy works best? Here is a project designed to test which incentive strategy works best for encouraging small children to complete a task.

How many times have you noticed someone who looks perfectly healthy using a parking space reserved for the handicapped at a busy shopping center? If this behavior gets you steamed, you might be interested in studying how to discourage handicapped parking cheaters. Is it enough to let them know someone might be watching?

Do you have a hard time hanging on to your money or do you have a harder time letting it go? This project shows you how to conduct a simple survey to measure how people manage their money. Find out what percentage of your classmates are 'spendthrifts' and what percentage are 'tightwads.' Although some of us may not like to admit it, everyone's afraid of something. Big dogs, thunderstorms, public speaking, heights: what are you most afraid of? Do you think grown-ups have the same fears as kids? How about first-graders and sixth-graders? Find out for yourself by doing this project. This project challenges you to think like a politician (and a scientist!), and try to ascertain what factors are most important as individuals make their decision on how to vote. For example, is it what is being said, or who is saying it? There's an old saying that "the clothes make the man" (or woman, we're quick to add nowadays). How true do you think this is? Here's a project with one approach for finding out. Mysteries and detective stories have been popular since the time of Sherlock Holmes. The solutions to these fictional cases often involve untangling seemingly contradictory evidence from eyewitnesses. This project studies one procedure used in the real-world process of eyewitness identification of criminal suspects: the lineup. How accurate are eyewitness identifications using various lineup methods?

Additional Project Ideas

Note: The following project ideas are abbreviated, without notes to start your background research or a procedure for how to do the experiment. You can identify abbreviated project ideas by the asterisk at the end of the title. If you want a project idea with full instructions, please pick one without an asterisk.

Here's a project that will give you insight into accidents, and maybe help you prevent them. The original project used a survey method to gather data, which you could also do. Another approach for data collection that you might try would be to use published articles from the pediatric medical literature. Finding a pediatrician or pediatric... Maybe this has happened to you: you're going shopping with one of your parents and the parking lot is really crowded. You're helping out, scouting for an empty space. You see someone heading toward their car, taking their keys out, and you point them out. At last, you're going to get a spot. You wait for the person to pull out so you can park. ... If you compare products made primarily for boys with products made primarily girls, you will probably notice differences in colors for the two groups. Why do you think this is? Is it the marketplace responding to gender-based color preferences? Do you think it's the other way around, and the products create gender-based color preferences?... We can't say it any better than he did, so here is Ryan Ponec's capsule description of his excellent project (Ponec, 2002): "At the end of a lesson, a teacher will sometimes have students summarize the information presented by stating, 'Tell me something you learned.' The purpose of this experiment is to determine whether or not this 'lesson... How well do adults understand basic science concepts? This project is a good opportunity for you to test your own scientific understanding as you create a short test to assess knowledge of basic science concepts. Your test will have to brief (probably 10–15 questions, maximum) or you'll have a hard time getting a sufficient number of complete... What causes the most stress for teenagers? Is it school? family relationships? peer pressure? worries about the future? Design a survey to find out what contributes to teens' stress levels. Possible variations include: How do teenagers deal with stress? Are today's teens more or less stressed than their parents were as teenagers? Were the... The author of this project hypothesized that movies often disappoint readers because book-based movies tend to "dumb down" the works on which they are based (Fuhrman, 2002). Naturally, selective compression is necessary when telling a story as a movie, or no one would sit through it. (Hey, maybe there's an idea for a different experiment!) ... The concept of beauty changes over time and often differs among societal groups. How strongly do societal conceptions of beauty shape an individual's self-image? There are many fascinating questions you could choose to explore with surveys on this subject. For example, how well do girls' ideas of what is attractive in boys agree with boys'... Can an authority figure make someone question their own memory? How reliable is eyewitness information? This project looks into these questions. You'll need a poster-sized image that includes many faces, and a volunteers to act as "eyewitnesses." The volunteers are tested individually. The instructions are that they have one minute to examine... Tests, homework, taxes, speed limits, sports: there's always the possibility of cheating. Design a survey to investigate attitudes about cheating. Are some kinds of cheating worse than others? Are there times when it is OK to cheat, or is cheating always wrong? Do people who admit to cheating have the same attitudes as those who don't? Is there a correlation between birth order and grade point average? Design a survey study to find out. How many completed surveys do you need for a representative sample of your school? If you limit your survey to one school, would you expect it to be representative of a larger population (such as your county or state?) How do you control for... This project asks the question "How do friendship groups change over time?" The results may support inferences about how "people skills" develop. What types of changes would you expect to see? Do you expect friendship groups to grow larger over time? Do you expect that individuals will belong to more, less or about the same number of friendship...

Resources

Sources for Additional Project Ideas

Burnette-McGrath, M., 2004. "Poky Parking: Does It Take Longer to Vacate a Parking Spot When Someone Is Waiting? Perception vs. Reality," California State Science Fair Project Abstract [accessed February 1, 2006] http://www.usc.edu/CSSF/History/2004/Projects/J1702.pdf.
Caito, N., 2003. "What Bone Do Children Break the Most and What Is the Main Cause?" California State Science Fair Project Abstract [accessed February 1, 2006] http://www.usc.edu/CSSF/History/2003/Projects/J1702.pdf.
Collins, L., 2003. "Mirror Mirror on the Wall, What's My Body Image After All?" California State Science Fair Project Abstract [accessed February 1, 2006] http://www.usc.edu/CSSF/History/2003/Projects/J1703.pdf.
De Biasi, N., 2003. "Why Are Teens Stressed?" California State Science Fair Project Abstract [accessed February 1, 2006] http://www.usc.edu/CSSF/History/2003/Projects/J1704.pdf.
Del Gavio-Kusich, O., 2003. "Can Adults Pass a Standard 7th Grade Science Test?" California State Science Fair Project Abstract [accessed February 1, 2006] http://www.usc.edu/CSSF/History/2003/Projects/J1705.pdf.
Doherty, J., 2003. "Evolution of Friendship Groups in the Fourth through Seventh Grades," California State Science Fair Project Abstract [accessed February 1, 2006] http://www.usc.edu/CSSF/History/2003/Projects/J1707.pdf.
Donabedian, A., 2004. "Does Gender Affect Color Preference?" California State Science Fair Project Abstract [accessed February 1, 2006] http://www.usc.edu/CSSF/History/2004/Projects/J1704.pdf.
Fuhrman, A., 2002. "A Box Office Disappointment: Why the Book is Always Better than the Movie," California State Science Fair Project Abstract [accessed February 1, 2006] http://www.usc.edu/CSSF/History/2002/Projects/J1705.pdf.
Gale, S., 2002. "The Power of Suggestion," California State Science Fair Project Abstract [accessed February 1, 2006] http://www.usc.edu/CSSF/History/2002/Projects/J1706.pdf.
Ponec, R., 2002. "The Effects of a Student Generated Lesson Summary on Retention," California State Science Fair Project Abstract [accessed February 1, 2006] http://www.usc.edu/CSSF/History/2002/Projects/J1712.pdf.
Simpson, C. and Yandell, K., 2003. " '1, 2, 3 As Easy As A, B, C' Myth or Fact: Does Birth Order Affect Your Grade Point Average?" California State Science Fair Project Abstract [accessed February 1, 2006] http://www.usc.edu/CSSF/History/2003/Projects/J1720.pdf.