Guides · ISEF category
Behavioral and Social Sciences
ISEF category BEHA · difficulty for high-school students: medium
Psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics, education, and cognitive science. Includes survey research, experiments with human participants, ethnographic studies, and behavioral economics.
How it's judged
ISEF scores 100 points across five criteria:
- Creative Ability: 30 pts
- Scientific Thought: 30 pts
- Thoroughness: 15 pts
- Skill: 15 pts
- Clarity: 10 pts
What wins
- Randomized controlled experiment testing a behavioral intervention
- Cognitive psychology study with reaction time / error rate outcome measures
- Economic field experiment testing nudge interventions in a real setting
- Cross-cultural comparison of a psychological phenomenon with matched samples
- Novel psychometric scale development and validation
Common mistakes
- Survey studies with convenience samples (friends/family) generalized to 'teenagers'
- Not accounting for demand characteristics, social desirability bias
- No IRB approval for studies involving human participants
- Correlational studies claiming causation: 'social media causes anxiety'
What you'll need
Primarily laptop + survey tools (Google Forms, Qualtrics free tier, jsPsych for reaction time experiments). No lab required.
Ethics & approvals
Projects here typically involve human participants — you'll need IRB review and ISEF Forms 5A/5B, filed before data collection. Vertebrate-animal (IACUC) approval is usually not required.
The novelty bar
A new hypothesis about human behavior tested with a properly controlled study. A survey asking if screen time correlates with sleep is not competitive — it has been studied hundreds of times.
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