Hypothesis Based Research and Meta-Analysis Research Plan
**When working through this document, complete ALL Action Steps. Keep all underlined bold headings. Delete all instructions after you complete each section.**
Title
Name(s):
Grade:
School:
County:
Working Title
Your title should identify your topic and general plan. (It doesn’t have to be your final title.)
Action Step:
Statement of Problem/Question
Action Step:
Hypothesis
A good hypothesis includes a prediction of the result and reason(s) why the result is expected. Make sure your hypothesis is something you can test!
Action Step:
If _(this is done/independent variable)_ then __(this will happen/dependent variable)_ because __(what is the scientific reasoning behind your prediction)__.
Background Research
Think of the background research section as if you were writing a report on your subject. Give enough relevant information and organize it logically so that when the audience reads your hypothesis at the end of the section, they’ll think, “Oh, that makes sense”.
Action Steps:
1st paragraph:
This is the introduction
Action Steps:
Example: To feed the growing population on the planet and to provide food security for everyone in both developing and developed nations, the diets of the future will have to include biofortified foods. Biofortification increases the nutritional value of food crops by increasing the vitamins or minerals in the food (Ofori et al. 2022). This can be achieved by genetic engineering, biotechnology, conventional plant breeding, and agricultural practices like providing beneficial supplements in livestock feed. Biofortified foods, also called functional foods, are a sustainable way to provide better nutrition to the world’s population. Biofortifying eggs would be a great way to provide a good source of vitamins and phytochemicals worldwide, since eggs are consumed all over the world. A goal of the biofortification of eggs is to increase their carotenoid content (Dansou et al. 2023). A specific example of an important nutrient deficiency that can be prevented with biofortified foods is vitamin A deficiency. Vitamin A is essential for vision, skin, and immune health. Over 124 million children worldwide suffer from vitamin A deficiency, and it is the leading cause of childhood blindness. It is estimated that improving vitamin A supplementation and availability could prevent 250,000–500,000 deaths annually among children under age 5 (Yue et al. 2022). Eggs that are biofortified with provitamin A carotenoids, such as β-carotene, could improve the lives of millions of people.
Middle paragraph:
This is the bulk of your background research. Try to set it up logically to lead your reader to the hypothesis while giving them enough information to understand your study. Be sure to tie the different pieces together to make a single story.
Action Steps:
- Go into more depth about your problem or question by discussing other studies that have been done and their results.
- Describe a few scientific concepts you will use to help you develop your experiment and answer your research question.
Last paragraph:
Close the research section by:
Action Steps:
Example: The objective of this research was to determine if a feed supplement including a high carotene-containing fruit in combination with high xanthophyll-containing petals could be used to produce a more nutritious quail egg that contains higher levels of both provitamin A (β-carotene and β-cryptoxanthin) and non-provitamin A (lutein and zeaxanthin) carotenoids important for human health and vision without having a negative effect on egg production efficiency. Hypothesis 1: Feed supplements containing a combination of petals with high xanthophylls and orange fruits with high carotenes will result in a more nutritious egg with higher concentrations of provitamin A and non-provitamin A carotenoids in the yolks. Hypothesis 2: Feed supplementation at 5-10% (by weight) of dried petals and/or fruits will not have a negative impact on egg production efficiency as determined by egg weights and feed conversion ratio.
Methods and Materials
It is very important to think through the design of your experiment by listing the materials and procedure so you could give someone else this information and he/she could replicate your experiment. You should also consider what data you will collect and how you plan to analyze the data.
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Materials:
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Procedure:
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Data Collection and Analysis:
Action Step:
*Stop and think: What results would I need to get to support my hypothesis→ could I get those results from the experiment as I have designed it?*
References
Action Step:
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/
Examples:
Dansou DM, Zhang H, Yu Y, Wang H, Tang C, Zhao Q, Qin Y, Zhang J. 2023. Carotenoid enrichment in eggs: From biochemistry perspective. Animal Nutrition. 14:315-333. doi.org/10.1016/j.aninu.2023.05.012
Ofori KF, Antoniello S, English MM, Aryee ANA. 2022. Improving nutrition through biofortification-A systematic review. Frontiers in Nutrition. 9(9):1043655. doi: 10.3389/fnut.2022.1043655.
Yue T, Zhang Q, Li G, Qin H. 2022. Global burden of nutritional deficiencies among children under 5 years of age from 2010 to 2019. Nutrients. 2022; 14(13):2685. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu14132685