Science Fair Proposal

1. What is your hypothesis?
Latino parents that expose their children to educational resources such as enrichment programs, college workshops, seminars, etc. at an early age will increase the motivation that Latino students have to pursue higher educational institutions, than that of Latino parents who do not expose their children to educational resources. 


2. Identify the dependent (produced), independent (manipulated) and control variables in your hypothesis.
Dependent: The motivation of Latino students. I am planning on measuring this through their own self-report and specifically asking them - 

• What colleges/universities did you apply/ied for your senior year?
• I will be ranking the colleges by title: Ivy League, Junior Ivy, etc. in order to analyze what level of difficulty for college they chose. 
• Did you apply to any scholarships?
• From your list which college/university did you think was the most prestigious? From a scale 1 - 10 how confident are/were you about getting accepted? 

Independent: The parents' actions that led their children to be informed about college/university. 

Control: I plan on asking the same questions that i did to the dependent group. They are going to be college/university students that have all ready gone through the college application process and made it. Since they have actually been admitted then I will be able to observe whether the educational resources really helped them. Because of the fact that many don't live with their parents I will not ask for the parents survey but just focus on self-reporting. I am going to compare these findings with the dependent group to try to verify the overall findings. 

3. What is the connection between your science fair project and your senior project EQ?
My senior EQ is: What is the best way to increase the amount of Latino students that pursue higher educational institutions? 


My science fair will be searching to see if parents truly play an important part on the motivation that high school students receive. I hope to find why some parents end up helping their kids more then other us and also determine whether it makes a difference or not. If it turns out that they are important then this could be a solution to my EQ. 


4. How will you perform the experiment?  Include the equipment you plan on using.
Equipment:

1. Questionnaire
2. Computer program that allows me to get frequencies and compare date. (I have used this in Pomona College once, so I will ask for the program) 
3. Consent form for minors

I will create a questionnaire for both parent and students (control and dependent) that will ask them various questions depending on their role. After letting them take it home and fill it out, I will plug all variables into the computer and start making connections. As of now I'm not exactly sure on all the possible questions/variables. 


5. Which category will your project be listed under? 
It will be listed under behavioral/ social science.