EPQ and Science Fair Project Ideas

For Young Learners

What This Is

An Extended Project Qualification, a science fair entry or a coursework investigation all need the same thing at the start: a question narrow enough to answer.

The knee is a good subject for one, because it is a joint you can measure without any equipment and because the published research on it is unusually accessible.

The commonest reason a school research project goes wrong is not effort. It is a question that was too broad to answer, chosen in week one and not revisited.

Why do people get knee injuries cannot be answered. Whether warm up length changes measured hamstring flexibility in one netball squad can be, and the second question is a better project.

How It Works

Projects on the knee tend to fall into three kinds.

Measurement. You measure something in a group of people. Needs a protractor or a phone application, consent from everyone involved, and a method you follow identically every time.

Literature review. You answer a question by reading what has already been published. Needs no participants, which makes ethics simple, and needs a stated search method so the review is reproducible.

Modelling or demonstration. You build something that shows a mechanical principle. Needs materials and careful writing about what the model does not represent.

Eight questions that have worked.

1. Does knee angle at landing differ between people who play a jumping sport and people who do not? Measurement, from video.

2. How consistent is a goniometer measurement of knee flexion when the same person measures twice? Measurement, and a study of your own reliability, which examiners like.

3. What does published research say about why female athletes tear the anterior cruciate ligament more often than male athletes? Literature review.

4. Does a warm up change measured range of movement, and for how long? Measurement, with repeated readings over time.

5. How do the shapes of the two menisci relate to the loads they carry? Modelling, with a built demonstration.

6. Has the published advice on returning to sport after knee injury changed over the last twenty years? Literature review, using dates.

7. Does step length change when a knee is braced? Measurement, using a borrowed brace and no clinical interpretation.

8. Why did arthroscopic surgery for one knee condition fall out of favour? Literature review, and the best of the eight for teaching how evidence works.

How to Prepare

Write the question down in one sentence and show it to a teacher before you do anything else. If they can see how you would answer it, it is narrow enough.

Sort the ethics first. Any project involving other people needs their informed consent, needs a way of keeping their data anonymous, and needs your school's approval. A project on anyone under eighteen also needs a parent or guardian's consent.

Decide what counts as an answer before you collect anything. Deciding afterwards is how people fool themselves.

Write the method as you go, in enough detail that somebody else could repeat it.

Common Mistakes

A question too broad to answer, kept because it sounded impressive.

Measuring with no check on whether your measurement is repeatable. Question two above exists because this is the commonest weakness in school projects.

Collecting data from friends and relatives only, then generalising.

Drawing a clinical conclusion. A school project cannot establish that a treatment works, and saying so in the write up is a strength rather than an admission.

No ethics or consent record. This can fail an otherwise good project outright.

Where to Find Out More

Your examination board publishes the current assessment criteria for the Extended Project Qualification, and the marks are mostly for process rather than for results.

Section 12 of this site covers research method at university level and beyond.

Cochrane plain language summaries are a realistic starting point for any of the literature review questions above.