Inspirational AVS students have eight projects in BT Young Scientists final

STUDENT: Eadaoin Murphy 

CATEGORY: Senior Social and Behavioural Biological and Ecological 

PROJECT TITLE: Do subject ambassadors promote uptake of subjects at Leaving Cert?

APPROACH: After I came up with the idea of investigating if subject ambassadors influenced student subject choice, I found a Masters Thesis by by Sinéad O’Sullivan from the University of Limerick which investigated the factors that Influence Students in their Choice of Music as a Senior Cycle Subject in Post Primary Education. In her findings she quoted parental influence as one of the main factors in deciding Leaving Cert subjects. I have also discovered that students that study STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) subjects are more likely to have some Science capital where they would know someone in a STEM related career and I think it would be interesting to see if science capital also influences subject choice in my secondary level .I intend on surveying all Third, TY, Fifth and Sixth year students to gain an insight into the factors that will influence or have influenced their subject choices. In total I will sample 600 students consisting of 300 students who have already made their subject choices and 300 students who have yet to make their subject choice so I will use targeted sampling of all 3rd to 6th year students in my school. This way I will generate a lot of data from a large same size which should reduce bias. Then I will carry out my statistical analysis to see if there is significance in my findings.