Science Fair Proposal

1. What is your topic?

· Child Play Therapy

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.)

· Although children need care many do not get treated.

The most recent U.S. Surgeon General’s report on mental health described the shortage of
appropriate services for children as a major health crisis and estimated that, although at least
1 in 10 of all children suffer from emotional and behavioral problems severe enough to impair
normal functioning, less than half receive any treatment (U.S. Public Health Service, 2000). The
report emphasized that “growing numbers of children are suffering needlessly” (p. 3) and it
stressed the importance of early intervention and family involvement. Thus, identifying proven
interventions that are responsive to the distinct needs of children and their families is critical,
not only to diminish unnecessary suffering but to prevent the development of more serious
impairment across the life span and the resulting cost to society.

Jones, Leslie. "The Efficacy of Play Therapy With Children: A Meta-Analytic Review of Treatment
Outcomes." American Psychological Association, 2005. Web. 24 Oct. 2012

http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~cfc/classes/CPSY_642/Readings/Class%209/The%20efficacy%20of%20play%20therapy%20with%20children.pdf

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

· If a child is receives a high score on the Brief SDQ Test then they are likely to be emotionally or behaviorally unstable.

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

·This experiment will be performed by following the Brief SDQ test instructions. I will ask a child's parent the questions either in person or through e-mail. once I receive the answers to the questions I will add up the scores and say weather or not the child is emotionally/ behaviorally unstable according to the Brief SDQ Test.

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

· Behavioral/Social Science

Problem Statement

Child Play Therapy 

1.  There are children who need therapy but do not receive it because parents do not realize the symptoms of a troubled child. This can be solved by raising awareness on children who have been traumatized or who have been effected by problems at home or their surroundings.

2. Even after a child has taken all of his or her play therapy sessions and is diagnosed to be healthy problems continue at home and/or their surroundings and cause the child to go back to square one. This can be solved by in cooperating the whole family into the child's play and working out the problems they have at home, this method of family therapy has been proven to have faster results.