Psychology Research Project (TÜBİTAK 2204-A)

Context

TÜBİTAK 2204-A is a research projects competition for high school students. Entries are judged as research: the question, the method, the data and the reasoning are all assessed, not just the conclusion. This project was submitted in the psychology field and was awarded at the regional stage in 2024.

Psychology is a demanding field for a first research project. The subject matter is familiar enough that everyone has an intuition about it, which makes it easy to write a study that only confirms what the author already believed.

Approach

The work followed the standard research sequence rather than an engineering one.

It started with a literature review, to find out what had already been established and to narrow a broad interest into one answerable question. The question was then stated as a hypothesis that could in principle be shown false.

Next came the design. That meant deciding what would be measured, choosing or adapting an instrument to measure it, and defining the sample — who would be included, how many, and how they would be reached. Participation was voluntary and responses were kept anonymous.

Analysis used standard descriptive and inferential statistics. The point of this stage is discipline: you decide what test answers your question before you look at the results, so that the data is not searched until something significant appears.

What I built

The output of a 2204-A project is a document, not a device. The deliverable was a written research report following academic structure — introduction and literature, method, findings, discussion and limitations — plus the poster and oral defence used at the regional evaluation.

The limitations section mattered as much as the findings. Sample size and sampling method bound what a study like this can claim, and saying so plainly is part of doing it properly.

What I learned

How much of research happens before any data exists. A weak question or a poorly defined sample cannot be repaired by analysis afterwards. I also learned to separate what the data shows from what I expected it to show, and to report the first even when it was less interesting than the second.

Note: this entry is a structural placeholder. The competition record is accurate; the technical write-up still needs the owner’s own detail.