2017-2018 Science Fair

Assess how you conducted your experiment.

● Please move this document to your ​shared Biology folder.

● To complete this, you will need to refer to your project proposal.
● After you answer all the questions, remember to ​submit the document in Canvas​.

Sample size
1. Below, put what you planned for sample size and/or repeated measures (#9 in experimental proposal).
15

2. Below, put the actual sample size and/or repeated measures you completed by the deadline (February
12).
34

3. If there are differences between your initial plan and what you completed by the deadline, explain
a) why they are different, and
b) what you could have done differently to reach your goal on time.
A. Yes, I decided to test a lot more because I felt it was necessary to receive as much data as possible,
so I just continued to test people even though I had reached my goal.
Procedure
4. Below, paste a copy of your planned steps from your project proposal (#15).
1. Find a person and bring them to a quiet room
2. Cover information required on ethics form
3. Have person complete survey
(https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfophqHfOWdJjBmu4tCXH8tKRanqEAeHez_IWg-G1Id
AeTRPg/viewform?usp=sf_link)
4. Tell them they will have 4 minutes to look at the article and set the timer. If they are done sooner,
let me know.
5. Show them the first paragraph, and tell the to read it.
6. Person reads article. (REAL NEWS)
(http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/12/old-drug-alcoholism-finds-new-life-cancer-treatment
?utm_campaign=news_daily_2017-12-06&et_rid=336831831&et_cid=1709447)
7. Say to them, “On a scale of 1-5, how believable is this article? 1 being absolutely fake news, 2 being
probably Fake news but requires more research, 3 being I am not sure; it could be fake or real. 4
being probably real news but requires more research, and 5 being absolutely real news. ”
8. Record response.
9. Show them paragraph 2 (Possibly
:http://yournewswire.com/university-pennsylvania-flu-vaccine-hoax/)
10. Repeat steps 4-8.
11. Show them Paragraph 3
(http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/11/30/tax-reform-is-on-track-and-democrats-want-to-d
erail-it-dont-believe-these-myths-about-senate-s-bill.html)
 12. Repeat step 10

5. Carefully look over your initial plans. In a numbered or bullet-pointed list below,
a) identify in detail things you actually did differently, and
b) explain why you made each change.

● For step seven, I added another reason or two to choose it. I believe this helped people narrow
down their choice down. (For example: Added: Could be a little bit of both.)
○ To this choice I also added- also requires more research because people could choose 2 or 4
rather than 3 because of the ability to research
● For article 2, I did add in a statement saying that the title was slightly adapted, which it was.
○ I either should not have said that or should not have adapted the title, so it would be more
authentic, but I thought it too obvious with the original fake news title. However, I do not
think this affected my results very much because this would make people more likely to
believe the article, but most people still didn’t.

Variables
6. In your proposal, find your standardized (#8) and extraneous variables (#10) and list them in the table
below.
Standardized variables Extraneous variables

Place of test People’s Biases

Source of News Mood of Test subjects

Time to analyze article Experience of Test Subjects

7. Standardized variable review:

Did you successfully standardize all the variables you planned to?
If not, explain why not. No, I was able to standardize the time and the source of news, but I was not able
to standardized the place of test. The place of testing was often a fairly quite area, but sometimes to
receive as many results as I did, I needed to test over the phone (made sure they were in a quite area), or
even some louder places.

Also, I sometimes forgot to standardize what I said to each test subject. Sometimes I would slightly alter
my explanations of aspects of the experiment.

8. Extraneous variable review:

Were there other factors (that you did not originally list) that you think could have affected your results?
Identify them and explain your answer.
The timing of the flu epidemic this year could have definitely affected my results for article 2 because
article two is about the Flu vaccine and this vaccine has been receiving a lot of national attention. So this
year’s epidemic, may have made some people, post epidemic, to change their answer for various reasons.

Also, often, people interpreted the rating scale in different ways, so I may have gotten different results
because of this. However, based on a person’s explanation for their rating, I directed them to the number
that fit with their explanation. Often this confusion came up between 3 and 4 for article 3.

The experience of the test subject was much more of a factor then I initially believed it would be. People
with more experience with fake news asked for more information, and to me, seemed more likely to give
certain articles threes. (Something that may have helped, is saying beforehand that these are not the full
articles, as people, especially with article one, rated them differently because of the lack of information.
This information could have been within the full article.)

Impact on Results
9. Think about all the ways the implementation of your experiment differed from your initial plans (your
answers to questions above).
Discuss how these changes may make your project stronger and/or make it weaker (i.e. make your
results more reliable or less reliable).

I think I should have definitely tried harder to standardized the area of testing, as this does make some
results slightly weaker; however, this should not have had a tremendous impact on the results. I think the
flu epidemic definitely could have impacted it for the worse as because of the epidemic, people are more
likely not to believe in the flu vaccine, and my second article was entirely about the flu vaccine. The rating
scale definitely makes my experiment weaker. I think I should have made it: “on a scale of 1-5 how
reliable is this article?” instead of assigning specific meanings to each rating. This makes it more clear on
what exactly they are responding to. The scale I used could be interpreted as: “How do I feel about this
article?” rather then how reliable it is. However, I believe most people responded to it as how reliable it
is. The different experience level of participants makes my experiment stronger as this further proves my
hypothesis of biases being the main factor in believing fake news. If someone has more knowledge
regarding something, they are more likely to believe an article that aligns with what they know about the
subject, or less likely to believe something that goes against what they know.

Reflection on learning
In August, y’all shared your thoughts on what the point of school is. Many of your responses involved
building skills. You may recognize some of them in this list below, which has a few of my top priorities for
skills to build in this class.

10. Read over the skills and indicate (with an X or a comment) where you feel you are with each, at this
point in the year.

I think I have I’m making progress. I’m struggling: I see This is a very weak
 very strong I feel pretty good some improvement area for me. I don’t feel
skills in this about it. but it’s really hard. I’ve improved at all.

Design X
experiments

Manage​ time & X

long term work

Work​ ​well X
independently:
with focus,
self-reliance, &
initiative

Own ​your own X

learning: take
responsibility for
your work;
know when you
need help and
ask for it.