oakendurin Posted August 1, 2015 Report Share Posted August 1, 2015 Hi! I've been having trouble coming up with a good biology IA topic. At first I thought I'd try to make an experiment to see how long it takes for cats to form a habit, but I only have five cats to use in the experiment and I'm not even sure if I could get any data so I decided to scrap that idea. Then I read about there being a possible link between eye colour and different personality traits and figured I could make a survey to test if there really is any correlation. Do you think that would be suitable for a bio IA? Or is it too simple? My class is the first IB class in my school so I the teachers are not always that helpful so I appreciate any help I can get here. I've been reading up on other IB students' process with IAs and it seems as if everyone has already started them or have their plan by the end of first year. But we haven't even been asked to pick the topic yet and I'm worried that I won't have time for any experiments. Thanks in advance! Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShootingStar16 Posted August 1, 2015 Report Share Posted August 1, 2015 umm the eye colour thing may be hard to do because it's really hard to gather data for eye colour. My bio IA was originally a correlation between blue eyes and the incidence of melanoma, but I found zero data about blue eyes, so I scrapped the topic. For the IA, if you don't have the time to design a lab, then you can do a database. I'm doing that for both my IA's. You just take the data from there and analyze the correlation and draw valid conclusions from it. You also have to account for uncertainties in the data. Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emilia1320 Posted August 1, 2015 Report Share Posted August 1, 2015 How would you define personality traits? Maybe use MBTI? You would need a lot data. How would you gather it? 1 Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
oakendurin Posted August 2, 2015 Author Report Share Posted August 2, 2015 umm the eye colour thing may be hard to do because it's really hard to gather data for eye colour. My bio IA was originally a correlation between blue eyes and the incidence of melanoma, but I found zero data about blue eyes, so I scrapped the topic. For the IA, if you don't have the time to design a lab, then you can do a database. I'm doing that for both my IA's. You just take the data from there and analyze the correlation and draw valid conclusions from it. You also have to account for uncertainties in the data. I was thinking that I would gather the data myself and then analyse it to see if there is any sort of correlation between traits and eye colours. I think I could be able to get 50-200 people to participate in the experiment, but I'm not sure if that's enough. And it would be risky to do this since I can't know if there would be any correlation in the end or any valid results. I did think about using an online database to analyse something, but I have no idea what. How would you define personality traits? Maybe use MBTI? You would need a lot data. How would you gather it?I was planning on making a survey of some sort and posting it online. I did a similar thing for my maths IA and got over 200 people to do the survey so I think it might work with this too. Yeah, I thought about using MBTI or then I would just make my own personality test and see if, for example, a lot of blue-eyed people would answer similarly to the questions and so on. I think this experiment could offer some interesting results, but if it doesn't I would be screwed Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xavier Posted August 2, 2015 Report Share Posted August 2, 2015 When thinking of an topic it might be good to have a few hypothesis in mind. Why would you expect there to be a connection between eye colour and behaviour? Remember that correlation doesn't always mean causation. Also if you had a valid hypothesis to begin with and don't get an result, then that is also a result you can analyse. No result is a result in itself. Personally a safe bet for an bio IA would be something to do with ecology. Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emilia1320 Posted August 2, 2015 Report Share Posted August 2, 2015 You must also take cultural effects into consideration. There are rather much blue-eyed individuals among Finnish people, and our culture kind of encourages somewhat introverted behavior. So if you found correlation between introverted trait and blue eyes it might as well be coming from cultural stuff. 1 Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebu Posted August 2, 2015 Report Share Posted August 2, 2015 By merely listening to your explanation, i'm not sure if this question would be 'sciency' enough. As Emilia1320 said, there are social factors to be discussed too. Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
oakendurin Posted August 2, 2015 Author Report Share Posted August 2, 2015 When thinking of an topic it might be good to have a few hypothesis in mind. Why would you expect there to be a connection between eye colour and behaviour? Remember that correlation doesn't always mean causation. Also if you had a valid hypothesis to begin with and don't get an result, then that is also a result you can analyse. No result is a result in itself. Personally a safe bet for an bio IA would be something to do with ecology.I did think about using ecological databases to analyse something at first. I guess that would be safer. I just have to find a topic that isn't overdone or boring. You must also take cultural effects into consideration. There are rather much blue-eyed individuals among Finnish people, and our culture kind of encourages somewhat introverted behavior. So if you found correlation between introverted trait and blue eyes it might as well be coming from cultural stuff.That's a good point. So I think if a study like this would be done it would have to be global, with thousands of participants to get reliable data. And I don't really have the resources for something like that. By merely listening to your explanation, i'm not sure if this question would be 'sciency' enough. As Emilia1320 said, there are social factors to be discussed too.Yep, that's what I was afraid of. My suggestion is a little more psychological than biological and probably isn't good for the IA. I'll have to think of something else. Thank you all for the help! Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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