Science+Experiment

Scientific Method Template

 * Topic:** Compare grades in school versus birth order (oldest, youngest, etc.)


 * Question:** Does birth order make a difference in school success?

For years, researchers have noticed that, on average, later-born children seem to score lower on standard IQ(intelligence quotient) tests than do their older siblings. The further down the birth order you are, the lower your IQ is likely to be.The common explanation is that parents only have a limited amount of time and energy to spend teaching their children. Children who are further down in the birth order get less parental stimulation, and as a result wind up with lower IQs. [|Birth order, Intelligence ?] Birth order may affect IQ scores because parents favourtisim the firstborn child, and they don't favourtisim the second born child as much because they figure that they don't want to do something all over again. [|Is it True ?] Research on birth order, sometimes referred to as ordinal position, shows that first born children are more likely to go to college than children in any other position in the family. These apply to "typical families" and probably do not apply to "dysfunction families" and may vary across various cultures. Parents should attempt to help each child to see themselves as unique individuals and avoid comparisons with siblings or others. [|Could it really be the PARENT ?]
 * Background Information:**

My hypothesis is birth order does have to do with school success, do to the lack of parental interest.
 * Hypothesis:**

1. First I will make survey sheets that look like this: I will print at least 20 of these out. 2. Then I will hand out all 20 of them to boys and girls and ask them to fill them. 3. Once they have filled them out the will return them to me. 4. After they are returned I will record all the data on to on two one big chart that looks like this: 5. Once I have recorded the data I will look over it a couple times and then will see if my hypothesis was correct or incorrect.
 * Procedure:**

At least 20 kids to fill out my survey At least 20 survey hand-out sheets A recording chart Pencil
 * Materials:**


 * Experiment:** Do the Experiment.

Here is the link to my results If you looked at the link you can see that my hypothesis is incorrect. The first born to last born grade order is not how I expected it to be. For example this is how one of the families grades that I look at - This is the total opposite of how I wanted it to turn out. See I found out that younger kids are learning from there older brothers and sisters mistakes, causing them to get older grades than there older siblings. Of course some of the families grades that I looked at matched my hypothesis, but most of them didn't. Majority rules my hypothesis was incorrect. I also found out that it depends on if the kid is a boy or girl because boys have shorter attention spans then girls causing boys to have lower grades.
 * Data/Results:**
 * **First Born** || **Second Born** || **Third Born** || **Fourth Born** || **Fifth Born** ||
 * C || B || A || C+ || C ||

My Hypothesis was that birth order does have to do with school success, do to the lack of parental interest. My hypothesis was incorrect because if you look at my data the grades are in the opposite order that then I thought they would be. See I thought they would be in an order that looks something like this example below.............. because parents because parents only like to teach something once. Anyway instead of the grades looking like the example above they looked something like the example below. I found out that the grades might look like this because the younger kids start to learn from there older siblings mistakes. Speaking of mistakes there are a couple things that I would change if I did this experiment again. Such as- I would have looked into my research a little more. I also would have instead of just handing out the survey hand out sheets to anyone. I would have handed them out to 10 boys and 10 girls. I would do this because during this experiment I found some research that said boys have a shorter interest span then girls and I would like to find out if that information is true or false.
 * Conclusion:**
 * **First Born** || **Second Born** || **Third Born** || **Fourth Born** || **Fifth Born** ||
 * A || B+ || C || D || U ||
 * **First Born** || **Second Born** || **Third Born** || **Fourth Born** || **Fifth Born** ||
 * C || D || C || B || A ||