how to write a good research plan for science fair

That's better, says one of our respondents--especially when that general goal is supported by more specific strategies. Keep track of where you get all information for your bibliography. These notes will help you write a better summary. Is this sort of coordination unethical? The specific aims must be clear and succinct." Please send your feedback to our editor. Indeed. Pay attention to the layout. But, since libraries and the Internet both contain millions of pages of information and facts, you might never find what you're looking for unless you start with a map! Have you used the question word table to generate research questions? There is some disagreement here among respondents. Think it through and present a workable strategy. Call it an abstract if you wish. (I'm sure you have other things you'd like to do, too!). I'm going to type that phrase again, it's so important: The best plans usually build on the prior experience of the applicant but are not direct extensions of their postdoctoral work. Still, increasingly it's a fact of life. Start with all the possible questions, then eliminate those that are too vague or those you cannot answer, given your time and resources. Science concepts and/or areas of science —, You can find this page online at: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/science-fair/writing-a-science-fair-project-research-plan. However, your research plan must be designed to serve more than one purpose. Individual experiments may be necessary for individual questions. "Brevity and clarity are the most important elements," wrote another respondent, expressing a sentiment shared by everyone. How do you do this? Consider any problems you may encounter in your experiments and how you will address them. One of my sources was unequivocal on this point: "Does the research question build on the preliminary data the person has generated? Well, now you are "networking" for knowledge (which is a very good thing to network for, by the way). Jim Austin is the former editor of Science Careers. Check for good grammar and spelling. In general, research plans are weighed more heavily later in the game, with more readily comprehensible evidence (especially pedigree, letters of recommendation, impact factor of journals, etc.) You can't be a one-trick pony. It isn't easy to change gears midcourse, but getting yourself into an important area of research will be well worth the effort in the long term--to your hirability, to your fundability, to your tenurability, and also to your career satisfaction. And if you haven't done the work yet, you don't know how it will turn out. Curing cancer is not a suitable goal for one individual's research plan--exciting, yes, but much too big to be believable. For a Good Background Research Plan, You Should Answer "Yes" to Every Question. If they are, find holes in the background information and find new questions that address them. Comments, suggestions? If we research every one of those questions we'll be studying farms, cows, cow udders, baby cows, and what cows eat. You probably won't get hired anywhere if you aren't well prepared to start a productive research program at a scale appropriate for the institution. ", Avoid obvious hype. Hmmmm, this is a little tougher than finding the keywords. Indeed, second-tier research institutions tend to expect the most experience; Harvard and Johns Hopkins do not expect you to have your own research grant. If you aren't applying for jobs right now, there's still time. Good sources of vitamin c include fruits, vegetables, and vitamin tablets. First, choose an important subject. But what's that column in the table called "Relevant? Even the best idea might fail to pan out, so you need to have a backup. A research plan outlines your proposed science fair project and must be approved by a science fair committee before experiments are done. So if you want to convince the committee that you will succeed, give them not one, but two, or even three, compelling approaches, all of which have a good chance of success. Motivate your work (why must this work be done?). Have you identified all the keywords in your science fair project question? Now, as a faculty member, I want to do something a little bit different, but the work I'm proposing takes full advantage of the knowledge and skills I gained during the training phase of my career." Decide what turf is his or hers, what turf is yours, and what story you intend to tell in your research plan and his or her letter of recommendation. Okay, so that isn't exactly true: It isn't hard to find advice. If you have them, use them--positive results will be of interest and persuasive to hiring committee members. Use a table with the "question words" (why, how, who, what, when, where) to generate research questions from your keywords. One respondent said, "I have seen applications rejected because they appear to have been produced in a vacuum without reference to other scientists.". A well-written research paper helps others understand your science fair project and may even improve your overall grade. Ask why things happen, ask how things happen, ask what causes things to happen, ask what are the properties of key substances. A research plan outlines your proposed science fair project and must be approved by a science fair committee before experiments are done. Tan received her Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University, Jupiterimages/Brand X Pictures/Getty Images, Copyright 2020 Leaf Group Ltd. / Leaf Group Education, Explore state by state cost analysis of US colleges in an interactive article. ", Avoid misrepresentations. Ask anyone with experience on your topic for help if you have difficult finding background information. And the focus must be on the science--on the problem you aim to solve--not on the scientist or a particular approach. There's no deception here, no attempt to pull the wool over the committee's eyes. No preliminary data equals no research question." Please don't misunderstand: You shouldn't tell them this ("in 5 years my lab will be vibrant, productive, and well-funded ..."); rather, you need to lead them to believe it by describing a research agenda that persuades them that you will succeed. Van Bavel , et al.Aug. Include exact amounts and explicitly state data collection methods. Demonstrate your awareness of other work being done in the field. If your project includes people, animals, regulated substances, or hazardous materials, you can attach an appendix that includes special activities you needed to do for your project. Remember how you "networked" with your mom to buy you that cool water gun, or "networked" with your grandpa to buy you that video game you always wanted? Believe it or not, there are actually people who study "roller coaster physics." The very best networkers, of course, enjoy the spoils of victory. The reality is we have all networked at some point in our lives. And until now, there was little advice to be found. What is hard is finding advice you can rely on. One respondent said it beautifully: "The best plans usually build on the prior experience of the applicant but are not direct extensions of their postdoctoral work.". What causes milk to increase (or decrease)? We have to focus our efforts on what we feel is most important, or another way of looking at it, let's not spend time researching anything we don't need to. A research plan should tell how great the science is, not how great you are. Copyright © 2002-2020 Science Buddies. Brainstorm additional keywords and concepts. You not only have to tell a good story--you also have to make it seem real, to make them expect it to come true. Holy flying cows! Be serious about writing. That's the outline of the story you must tell: "I did this work as a grad student/postdoc and it was important and it was great. And if you've already started to think about your own lab, it will help you to refine your plans. If you aren't passionate about your work, your best bet is to find work about which you can be passionate. Because we talked to a lot of people. Furthermore, we'll keep talking to people about this topic, and we'll incorporate new responses into this document as we receive them. Note that there are two issues here: believing in the importance of your own work, and persuading others that your work is important. Make sure that it swings. Others preferred a broad-brushed approach: "Is the research question a good question? Get the message? Inhibiting tumor growth? Selling yourself is the job of your curriculum vitae and letters of recommendation. AAAS is a partner of HINARI, AGORA, OARE, CHORUS, CLOCKSS, CrossRef and COUNTER. When does a plant grow the most, during the day or night? Questions that will help you design and understand your experiment are called relevant. "Clear, concise writing ... is a plus," said another. Different institutions expect you to be at different stages of your career. What causes ________ to increase (or decrease)? It's possible to function quite well as a postdoc or grad student while giving little thought to your future. But make sure they don't match too precisely. The nature of your preliminary data and findings will vary--some will have much to share, others might be forced to share very preliminary data. Furthermore, presenting more than one idea will help convince the committee that you aren't a one-trick pony. Build a foundation for your questions with background information. Yikes! Surprisingly, a lot of people mess this up. Provide the committee a compelling, reassuring, believable image of what their life will be like when you are working down the hall. There are two parts to this: You have to tell a good story, and you have to make them believe it. What causes spiciness to increase (or decrease)? A good figure, displayed prominently and captioned carefully, is worth, say, a couple hundred words. The key objective if you’re applying to one of these institutions is securing research grants: If you have a grant in your own name, you'll be a strong candidate; if you don't have your own grant, you are less competitive. Include an executive summary. Keep track of your information for your bibliography. Dr. Alex Tan has been writing in science for more than six years. Where is the focal point of a lens? There is some variation from one discipline to the next (the first of these recommendations came from a medical school, the second from a department of chemistry), but there are few if any standards even within a field. What Makes a Good Background Research Plan? If you are doing an engineering or programming project that involves designing or inventing a new device, procedure, computer program, or algorithm, then be sure to check out the Science Buddies resource The Engineering Design Process. This is called "networking." But how do you know if the institution to which you hope to apply is one of these? Fruit juice is a good source of vitamin c. The purpose of this project is to find out which fruit juice has the most vitamin c. B. Goals/Expected Outcomes/Hypotheses . The place to start building your background research plan is with the question for your science fair project (see, we did that first for a reason). These days some pretenure-track scientists are setting up their own research programs. Hiring committees desperately want to avoid making a serious mistake by investing institutional and intellectual capital in the wrong person. Science fair research papers, however, have become a capstone to any successful science fair project. Most of you are trying to get hired. Filling in a little table can help. One respondent listed a hypothesis among the essential features of a research plan. Constructing a research plan along these lines strengthens your application in three ways: You avoid alienating the committee by boring them; you tell the committee precisely what you intend to do; and you show that you have a subtle mind and a deep knowledge of your field. You should have some special questions in your background research plan. Selling yourself is the job of your curriculum vitae and letters of recommendation. It's different enough to be original, but similar enough that your years of training aren't wasted. Customize your research plan to the institution you're applying for. ), For example, let's imagine your science fair project question is: Does the velocity of a roller coaster car affect whether it falls off a loop? Even so, in that crazy list of cow science, there are two questions that look relevant for your background research: Sometimes you won't be sure whether a question is relevant or not, and that's always a good time to get the opinion of more experienced people like your mentors, parents, and teachers. As you do your research, follow your background research plan and take notes from your sources of information. Nearly every applicant for a tenure-track faculty job is expected to include a research plan. Key Info Background research is necessary so that you know how to design and understand your experiment. It's pretty obvious, but you wouldn't send the same research plan to Johns Hopkins University and to Swarthmore College. Determine what is already known, who figured it out and how these finding have already affected the world. So how do you do it? By June Gruber, Jay J. Your research plan should be coherent, with a theme common to all your work, but not so close that they seem to be shades of the same idea. It helps to be somewhere in the middle of that continuum, but most committees are still looking more for promise than for guarantees. How to Write a Science Fair Research Paper? Can't do this yet? © 2020 American Association for the Advancement of Science. "[That kind of research] can travel down several different mechanistic routes," this respondent says, "i.e., angiogenesis, breakdown of extracellular matrix, gene activation, induction of molecules involved--it can use different models--implanting tumors, using different tumor models, in vivo, in vitro, etc." Be careful, however: This is tricky ethical territory. Let's do it for our keyword spiciness: Those look like pretty good questions to research because they would enable us to make some predictions about an experiment. Even experts will look puzzled if you ask a question that is so generic it leaves them pondering where to start. A research plan should tell how great the science is, not how great you are. Being specific is not the same thing as including loads of detail. It's a tough sell, but most of your competitors are in the same boat. Another respondent wrote, "Most candidates (95%) stick to extensions of what they are most familiar with, but the key is, have they figured out some rather creative new directions for the research and have they done a good job convincing us that they can do it based on what is already known?" Some of these people will have had classes or work experience that involved studying the science involved in your project. But these days some institutions and departments are looking for more than that. Answering questions about bacteria growth, for example, has implications on disease prevention. What are the properties and characteristics of spicy substances? When you are driving a car there are two ways to find your destination: drive around randomly until you finally stumble upon what you're looking for OR look at a map before you start. I strongly recommend that the candidate have colleagues pre-review the proposal and make sure the English is clear and ideas explained so that a variety of people in the general area can understand what is being proposed and the importance of the work.". That means that any one approach you specify might not work, even if it seems compelling. Science fair research papers are written in the form format that you may use to write a science project report. One key to doing this successfully is to make sure your boss tells the same story. Bulleted lists are good; page-long paragraphs, bad. In her list of fatal errors, one respondent wrote: "Poorly covering or misstating the literature, grammatical or spelling errors, and, near the top of the list, writing research plans that ask for too much effort on the part of the reader--they should be clear and concise. If no advice is forthcoming, aim for five pages, 12-point Times New Roman, 1.5 spaced. My recommendation? "If you were sitting for 4 hours reading such proposals, what would you look for? Since a committee must approve your plan, provide a proposal that represents your ideas as important, doable and unique in its approach. Formalize a research plan. If committee members can get the gist of what you’re saying from a figure without wading through your impenetrable prose, your odds of getting interviewed shoot up. Nothing grounds your hopes and dreams in the real world like good, solid data. Include preliminary data. She is now working as a technical and science writer in California. Talk to your adviser about carving out your own research niche within the larger research effort, where you do work motivated by your own original ideas, something related but oblique to what your adviser is doing in the rest of the lab. It must withstand intense scrutiny in the later rounds of the job search, and it must make a good first impression. We considered everything, filtered out the muck, and distilled it all down to a general strategy and a few simple principles, with a few variations on the theme thrown in for good measure. No matter how knowledgeable you are, no matter how well considered your research plan, you can't predict the future. Let's think about spiciness first. What are the properties and characteristics of milk, Pepsi, and water. How does a java applet work? As a consequence this piece, like the other tools in the tool kit, will remain fresh and useful when other resources have become dated and useless. Avoid obvious mistakes. If the research you propose is not manifestly, obviously important, if you don't know why it's important, or if you can't convey its importance effectively, convincing the committee to hire you won't be easy. If the story isn't compelling you won't get hired, and if they can't quite imagine it becoming reality, you won't get hired. The research plan, however, serves another, very important function: It contributes to your development as a scientist. Including a hypothesis is unlikely to hurt you (assuming it's done effectively), and it'll keep you in the running at institutions where a hypothesis is required. You guessed it, network with your mentors, parents, and teachers. But there were two parts to this, remember? Please enter a search term in the text box. What do you do then? a quick (and clear) idea of the proposed research is a must." Do one or more of your research questions specifically ask about any equipment or techniques you will need to perform an experiment? Opinions vary. If you ask someone who has studied physics in high school or college, they will tell you to ask the research question, "What is centripetal force? Most candidates for entry-level tenure-track faculty jobs at institutions that require research (that is, most of the people who write research plans for job applications) are somewhere in the middle. You should also plan to do background research on the history of similar experiments or inventions. You may print and distribute up to 200 copies of this document annually, at no charge, for personal and classroom educational use. To make a background research plan — a roadmap of the research questions you need to answer — follow these steps: . Think of it as a continuum: At one end sit well-established researchers with strong research records, many first-author (or last-author) publications, and their own research funding. This shows how much of a crapshoot getting hired can be: Because you usually don't know in advance how long a document the hiring committee is looking for, there's little chance of the same candidate, no matter how qualified, getting offers from both of these institutions. Think critically about your planned experiments. Possible problems may be its own section or part of the materials and methods section. And by the way, networking is something many adults don't expect students to be very good at, so you can probably surprise them by doing a good job at it! Exceptions are rare. To avoid getting lost, you need a background research plan. Think of it as a rough draft, a fantasy trip for your career. List the necessary materials and equipment. One person I spoke to said that a research plan should be "about three pages of 1.5-spaced text, and NEVER more than five." When does spiciness cause upset stomachs? And by all means have several people--preferably senior colleagues who have served on hiring committees--critique your research plan. Let's imagine that you have asked this one: Begin by identifying the keywords and main concepts in your question. Be specific. If you want to succeed as a scientist you have to be resourceful. Is it big enough, but with answerable individual questions so that the question generates a research path that could be followed for some time?" Make sure your questions are not already answered by the work of other people. In the words of one scholar, "You can tell a 'building castles in the sky' research plan. Your plan might sound exciting, but will it work? Finding information for your background research is very similar. Just starting out as a postdoc? Our table of question words is a great way to generate ideas for your background research, but some of them will be irrelevant and we just throw those out. If your writing skills are weak, it might be time to strengthen them. But never mind about that. Increasingly, senior postdocs are being promoted to research associate or research faculty positions during what the GrantDoctor calls the "postpostdoc" phase of their research career. The combination of a manifestly important goal with manifestly interesting, feasible approaches is the foundation of the research plan. Citations from reliable resources gives credibility to your project. Do your homework: Learn about the culture of the department and the experiences of previous faculty hires. For this reason, it contains no experimental data but instead offers the questions you plan to address, the significance of questions, background information and experimental design. You want to learn from the experience of others rather than blunder around and repeat their mistakes. It's a cynical cop out on the institution’s part, really, taking a pass on the difficult job of evaluating talent and capitulating to the reality of big-time biomedical research: It's all about the cash. Network at your local university. As will become apparent later in this document, one of the functions of a research plan is to demonstrate your intellectual vision and aspirations. That's nine to 12 pages. Ask them: "What science concepts should I study to better understand my science fair project?" Science fair winners know how to write reports that prove scientific skills and impress the judges, writes science columnist and educator Dr. Carlson. The purpose of your research paper is to give you the information to understand why your experiment turns out the way it does. Have you thrown out irrelevant questions? Identify your goals, state why those goals are important, define your approach to achieving those goals, and indicate the kinds of evidence that will validate your approach. (if applicable). A research plan isn't just for demonstrating; it's also for honing and refining. Don't just take your adviser's ideas and package them as your own, even if your adviser signs off on the plan. (Is that a cool job or what?) Very often these folks have an R01 before they begin applying for a tenure-track job. "A perceived misrepresentation of any kind can doom an application.". "Over hyping," writes a source, "is very dangerous. Often a good topic for your background research is simply the specialized area of science that covers your project. So, how does the four-point formula we mentioned above work? The idea is to present, up front, in half a page or so, the information that the committee is most likely to be looking for in the early, screening phase of the search: clearly stated research goals, the most compelling motivation, and the general approach you intend to take. You do library and Internet research so that you can make a prediction of what will occur in your experiment, and then whether that prediction is right or wrong, you will have the knowledge to understand what caused the behavior you observed. and "What area of science covers my project?" If you're a lousy writer, get help. They are not built on solid data and go to the very bottom of the pool." For example: Add to your background research plan a list of mathematical formulas or equations (if any) that you will need to describe the results of your experiment. One of the most important things you can do is talk to other people with more experience than yourself: your mentors, parents, and teachers. All rights reserved. So take a stab at writing a research plan, even if you don't expect to be on the job market for a while. After all, some people are passionate about, um, peculiar things. Those scientists and institutions--the ones sitting at the experienced far end of the continuum--are exceptional. How Not to Kill a Grant Application, Part 6: Developing Your Research Plan, Maximizing Productivity and Recognition, Part 3: Developing a Research Plan, Grad students challenge university-mandated COVID-19 agreements, As the pandemic erodes grad student mental health, academics sound the alarm, How to (seriously) read a scientific paper, Academia needs a reality check: Life is not back to normal, Disgraced researchers can still reap drug industry payouts, A call for diagnostic tests to report viral load, Stem cell studies probe origins of the placenta, Record U.S. and Australian fires raise fears for many species, American Association for the Advancement of Science. Make sure they address the questions you stated. The secret is to use the "question words" (why, how, who, what, when, where) with your keywords. Most hiring committees aren't looking for completely independent work; they're looking for original, creative ideas, together with a record of accomplishment. That information is definitely irrelevant to our science fair project question: Does drinking milk help decrease spiciness better than water or Pepsi? Network with other people with more experience than yourself: your mentors, parents, and teachers. Present more than one good idea. Ask. Which cleaning products kill the most bacteria? Be specific. (After all, there's gotta be something that causes that hunk of metal to go up, right? In other words, they get what they want more quickly, efficiently, and smoothly. How is this possible? Science Buddies provides an example of this. We use it to define the target audience by figuring out what we plan to talk about, stating it, and recalling what we stated. Ask them, "What science concepts should I study to better understand my project?" On paper. "Once we have a short list of candidates," writes yet another source, "the research proposals are looked at more carefully for imaginative ideas that differ from the candidates’ Ph.D. or postdoctoral research." Fill Your Keywords (or Variations on Your Keywords) into the Blanks, Possible Questions for Background Research.

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