Research for Students Who Are Not Into STEM: Where to Start

Many research guides assume a lab. This page is a spoke of our guide on how to do research in high school for students whose interests are in history, politics, society, language or the arts. It shows how to start with sources you can open today.

Does research have to be STEM?

No. Research is a question answered with evidence, and a lab is only one place evidence comes from. In the humanities and social sciences, the evidence is usually documents, images, recorded voices, survey results or interviews. A university library guide gives the basic split: primary sources provide original evidence or first-hand accounts, and secondary sources summarize, interpret or analyze them.^[1] Its example is a set of letters written by an author, which are primary, while a historian’s book analyzing those letters is secondary.^[1]

That split shapes your project. You read primary sources for what they show, and secondary sources to see what scholars have already argued about them. The method changes from the lab, but the standard does not: a clear question, evidence a reader can check, and honest limits.

Your interest	A question you might ask	Evidence you work from	What you produce
History	How did a policy change over time?	Records, letters, photographs, maps	An argument built from sources
Politics or sociology	Do groups answer a survey question differently?	Public survey data	Charts and a careful comparison
Literature or film	How does a work treat one theme?	The work plus the records around it	A close reading with context
Art or music	How did a form change in one place?	Works, reviews, catalog records	A comparison with named evidence

What sources can you use for free?

Use archives and public datasets that do not need a lab, a fee or a mentor to open. The National Archives gives a four-step route for starting: pick a topic, gather information, find records and information about records, then decide whether to visit.^[2] Its DocsTeach site offers letters, photographs, speeches, posters, maps and videos, and a separate set of worksheets guides you through reading photographs, written documents, posters, maps, cartoons, videos and sound recordings.^[3]

For social science, look for public survey data. NORC says its General Social Survey has run since 1972 and offers recent data in SAS, Stata and SPSS formats.^[5] Pew Research Center says it makes case-level data for much of its research available to the public for secondary analysis after a period of time.^[4] Data.gov describes itself as the US government’s open data site, launched in 2009.^[10]

Source	What the source says about itself	Good for
National Archives	A route for researching its records[2]	Government documents on a person, place or agency
DocsTeach	Primary sources plus analysis worksheets[3]	Learning to read one source type carefully
General Social Survey	Survey data since 1972[5]	Questions about public attitudes
Pew Research Center	Case-level data released after a period of time[4]	Comparing groups in a recent survey
Data.gov	The US government’s open data site[10]	Questions about places, years or programs

Survey files come with codebooks and may need software to open. Read the documentation, and check each source’s own terms before you reuse anything. For archive-based ideas that fit a first project, see our list of history and humanities project ideas.

How do you start a non-STEM research project step by step?

Start with a source, then write the question. A topic without sources you can reach is a wish, not a project. This order works for most humanities and social science work:

1. Pick a broad area you care about, such as a period, a community, a work or a policy.
2. Open an archive or dataset from the table above and list what you can actually read.
3. Read what scholars have written about it. A literature review combines summary with synthesis: a recap of each source, then a reorganizing of that information to show how the sources relate.^[7]
4. Write one narrow question that your sources can answer.
5. Choose the method from the first table and write down what you will compare or analyze before you start.
6. Record where every source came from and who made it, and read each one for what it leaves out.
7. Write what the evidence shows, what it does not show and what else could explain it.

A literature review alone can be a fair first step, but it adds no new evidence of your own. If you want to show your own analysis, add a primary source, a dataset or a small comparison. Our guide to research without a lab maps the same methods across fields.

Do surveys and interviews need approval?

Yes, when real people are involved. Science fair rules from Society for Science treat studies that collect surveys, questionnaires or tests of any kind as human participant research, and say participants who are minors must give assent and a legal guardian must give written permission.^[6] For a survey, the rules say it must be attached to the consent form as part of the written permission.^[6] The rules do not name interviews, but they cover studies in which the researcher interacts with another human, so plan an interview as research with people.^[6]

Using existing data is different. The same rules exempt review of preexisting data sets that are publicly available or published, as long as there is no interaction with humans or collection of data from a person.^[6] Data with identifying details falls back under the stricter rules.^[6]

Your project	Under science fair rules
Reading archives or published sources	No people involved
Public survey data, no identifying details	Exempt from pre-approval
Your own survey	Review, assent and written permission first
Interview	Plan it as research with people and ask first

These are science fair rules. Your school, mentor, journal or a competition may set its own. When rules differ, follow the stricter one and ask a teacher or mentor before you contact anyone.

Who can guide you, and where can you share the work?

Ask a teacher, school librarian or a mentor in the field to check your question and your reading of the sources. For ways to find one, see our guide on finding a research mentor. You do not need one to begin.

For sharing, a history project can go to a contest. National History Day says it offers students in grades 6 through 12 the chance to explore topics of history, using writing, performance art and documentary filmmaking.^[8] The Concord Review describes itself as the only quarterly journal in the world that publishes the academic research papers of secondary students.^[9] That is the journal’s own claim, and its home page does not state submission rules or fees, so read its submission page before you decide. A venue is optional. Many strong projects are shared in class or in a school write-up, and you should vet any journal first.

What should you do next?

Open one source from the table, read five items, and write your question in one sentence. If it involves people, ask a teacher or mentor about approval before you start. When you describe the finished work later, our guide on describing research on the Common App shows how to state your role accurately. If you want an outside view of how your overall profile reads, the free review on ivy-league.io is built for that.

What do we not know?