Blog 5b: Science Fair Proposal

1. What is your topic?

• Cancer survivorship.

2. What is the driving problem behind your experiment and the quote by an expert to support that problem? (Expert citation must be MLA format.)

• The driving problem behind my experiment is: Most people who survive cancer go through depression. A quote from an expert regarding this problem states:

--> “In addition to physical effects, adolescent cancer survivors may experience psychological effects such as depression, anxiety, poor peer relations, low school performance, loneliness, post-traumatic stress disorder (Stuber, 2006), and obsessive worrying (Hewitt et al, 2004; NCI, 2004) which contribute to low self-esteem and a poor outlook on life (Zebrack & Chesler, 2001).” 

CITATION:  Jones, Barbara L. "Cancer Current Trends:€“ Adolescent Cancer Survivors and Substance Abuse Risk." Cancer Current Trends – Adolescent Cancer Survivors and Substance Abuse Risk « Helpstartshere.org. National Association of Social Workers, n.d. Web. 04 Nov. 2012. <http://www.helpstartshere.org/health-wellness/cancer-current-trends-adolescent-cancer-survivors-and-substance-abuse-risk.html>

  3. What is your hypothesis? (Must be in If-Then form.)

• If a cancer survivor has minimal or no support systems, then that individual will experience depression. 

4. Write a paragraph summary of how you will perform the experiment.  Include the tools you plan on using.

• For my experiment, my goal is to survey at least 25 cancer survivors. The more survivors I survey, the more accurate my experimental results will be. The survey I will be using will act as my tool for this experiment. The survey is called the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale, or the CES-D scale from the National Institute of Health. It was invented by Lawrie Radloff in 1977 and "was found to have very internal consistency and test-retest repeatability". I will also be additionally asking them how many support systems they have. I will compare their answer to this question to their test data to hopefully track a correlation between the two.

5. Select one of the following Project Categories for your experiment:

• Behavioral/Social Science