How to Conduct an AgriScience SAE

1
How to Conduct an AgriScience SAE

• The Science Workbook
• Student Research Projects in Food - Agriculture -
  Natural Resources

2
Identify the Problem(What question do you want
answered?)

• Narrow enough to investigate
• Of interest to researcher
• May modify an existing project
• Don't worry about title at this point

3
Formulate Hypothesis(what do you expect?

• A statement to be proven or disproved
• A scientific guess
• Should predict a possible result
• Search literature of other related research

4
Research(hit the library and the internet)

• Contact university researchers
• National Ag library, http//www.nalusda.Gov.
• Use inter-library loan
• Use note cards on books, articles, etc.
• The science fair project index, scarecrow
  press, 1983

5
Design Investigation (how you are going to do
this)

• Controlled experiment is most common
• Use control group experimental group
• Anticipate sources of experimental error
• Have adequate subjects in each group
• Repeat the experiment 2-3 times
• Follow guidelines for care use of lab animals

6
Write Proposal (tell your teacher what you are
doing)

• Write out a statement about the
• Problem
• Your hypothesis
• What you found in the literature
• The design of your experiment
• Get feedback from your teacher
• Get feedback from university researchers

7
Collect Data(record your observations)

• Record data into prepared tables
• Record non-statistical data in notebook
• Report data - mean, median, and mode
• Standard deviation will show extreme values

8
Draw Conclusions (what this data means)

• Accept or reject your hypothesis
• What is relationship of the variables?

9
Write Report (Becoming a scientific author)

• Abstract (condense paper to a one page)
• Introduction
• Background
• Statement of problem
• Hypothesis
• Experimental design
• Analysis (include tables graphs)
• Conclusions
• References