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Create Your Own Research Study

Scientific research can happen anywhere. You can use animals in your classroom, animals that visit your school grounds, animals in a local park or your pets at home. You don't need to study large, you can observe caterpillars, pill bugs, hamsters or horses. It doesn't even have to be an animal! This technique works if you are watching plants, the ocean, rocks or clouds! You can study anything, the maple tree in your front yard, the pond at the park, anything that you want to learn more about. Just remember the steps to a good scientific study:

  1. Make some initial observations, watch your subjects and see what they do.
  2. Clearly state what you want to know. Develop a plan to measure your observations. Be sure to avoid questions that depend on feelings, or have to many variables. (research question)
  3. Make a statement about what you expect to happen (a hypothesis).
  4. Collect information that will help prove or disprove your expectations. Make sure data is collected as accurately and consistently as possible. (data collection)
  5. Look for patterns or meaning in your data. (data interpretation)
  6. Using the information, you gathered, re-examine your hypothesis, and adjust as necessary.

Scientist often ask questions to solve specific problems, sometimes they just want to know what an animal does. This information is called baseline data. Baseline can be used to compare things that happen in the future to how things "normally" are.

Creating A Research Question

Here is an example of how we created the Swamp and Colobus Monkey Research Question

Step 1: Watch your Subject (Initial Observation)
Animal care staff watched the two species of monkey as they were rotated on exhibit. They wondered if there was a difference in the way the two species used the many areas of the exhibit.
Step 2: Decide what you want to find out (Develop a Research Question)
This is the step where you develop a single measurable question. Be careful to avoid statements that are difficult to measure. (Example: can you really tell if an animals likes something? or how it feels about something?) We decided our research question would be:

Do Swamp and Colobus monkeys use the exhibit differently?

We decided to count the number of times each species was seen using a part of the exhibit. (How many time did the Colobus monkey climb on the logs? or How many times were the swamp monkeys seen on the ground, etc.)

Step 3: Make a Prediction (a hypothesis)
We thought that we would find:

Swamp and Colobus monkeys use the parts of their exhibit differently.

Step 4: (Collect Data)
We used a very simple way to collect data. We asked visitors to count how many monkeys and of which species, they saw using the different parts of the exhibit. Visitors were asked to watch for a couple of minutes, and write down what they observed every 30 seconds. We gave them a list of the different part of the exhibit. The data sheet looked something like:
Location\Time 0 sec 30 sec 60 sec 90 sec 120 sec
Grass at Lower Level ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
Grass at Upper Level ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
Branches ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
Tree Trunks (>12" diameter) ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
Rocks ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
Water ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
Rope ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
Upper Den ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
Lower Den ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
Step 5: Look for a Pattern or Meaning in the Data (Data Analysis)
For our data analysis, we counted up the number of times each species was seen using each part of the exhibit. We put the data into a table that looked like:
Location\Animal Allen's Swamp Monkey Colobus Monkey
Grass at Lower Level 40 12
Grass at Upper Level 23 126
Branches 58 135
Tree Trunks (>12" diameter) 27 95
Rocks 58 130
Water 8 3
Rope 0 8
Upper Den 29 65
Lower Den 152 10
Then we made graphs with the information in the table to see the results more clearly.
 
Step 6: Re-examine your prediction
After we looked at the data, we came to this conclusion:

Swamp and Colobus monkeys use their exhibit differently. Swamp monkeys preferred the lower part of the exhibit, while Colobus monkeys used the trees and upper part of the exhibit more.

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