Social Science and Humanities Research for High School Students

A high school student can do publishable research in sociology, political science, history or the humanities by asking a specific question about people, institutions or the past, then answering it with evidence: survey data, election records, digitized archives or close reading of texts. The difference between a research paper and a school essay is that a paper produces or analyzes evidence that others can check, instead of only arguing an opinion.

This guide covers the kinds of social science and humanities research a student can do, example questions, methods and free sources, where student papers in these fields get published, and which competitions fit. Psychology has its own guide: see how to do psychology research in high school. For economics and finance, see our economics research guide.

Strong students in these fields usually show their interest through debate, Model UN, essay contests or school publications. Those are valuable, but they are common. An original research paper is not. It shows you can find sources, handle evidence fairly, and reach a conclusion that follows from what you found.

These fields are also some of the most open to student researchers. Most projects need no lab, no equipment and no special data access. Archives, surveys and election records are public.

Fields and what research looks like in each

Field	What you study	Typical evidence
Sociology	Groups, inequality, family, education, work	Large public surveys, census data, interviews
Political science	Elections, institutions, public opinion, policy, conflict	Election returns, voting records, democracy indicators
International relations	How states and organizations interact	Treaties, conflict datasets, speeches
History	What happened, why, and how we know	Primary sources: letters, newspapers, records
Philosophy	Arguments about ethics, knowledge, mind	Texts, logical analysis
Literature and languages	How texts create meaning	Close reading, digital text analysis
Digital humanities	Patterns across large collections of texts or images	Digitized archives, computational tools

Example research questions

Sociology:

Has the link between parents' education and trust in institutions changed across survey years?
How do students in two different school types describe their path to college, in their own words?

Political science:

Did counties with new voting rules see turnout change differently from similar counties without them?
How often do legislators break with their party, and has that changed over decades?
Did democracy scores in a region move after a regional trade agreement?

History:

How did local newspapers in one state report a national event, compared with national papers at the time?
What do surviving letters reveal about how one community experienced a historical migration?

Humanities:

How does the vocabulary of a novelist's work shift between early and late books, measured across the full texts?
How do two philosophers' arguments on the same ethical question rely on different assumptions?

Each question is narrow, names its evidence, and could be answered within a few months.

Methods a student can actually carry out

1. Secondary analysis of public surveys

Large surveys let students study attitudes and behavior across thousands of people without collecting data themselves. The General Social Survey, run by NORC with National Science Foundation support, has tracked American attitudes, behaviors and characteristics since 1972. IPUMS makes census and survey microdata from many countries available for research. The American National Election Studies covers voting and public opinion.

2. Quantitative political analysis

Election returns from sources such as the MIT Election Data and Science Lab, congressional voting records from Voteview, and democracy indicators from V-Dem support studies of turnout, polarization and institutions. Simple comparisons and regressions can answer strong questions when the comparison is fair.

3. Archival and primary source research

Historians build arguments from primary sources. The Library of Congress, including its Chronicling America newspaper archive, the US National Archives and HathiTrust put enormous collections online. A student can work with sources that have never been closely studied for a specific question.

4. Interviews and oral history

Talking to people produces new evidence. It also requires care: any study with human participants needs informed consent and review before data collection, and fairs following ISEF rules require it.

5. Content and text analysis

Coding speeches, news coverage, textbooks or social media posts for themes, either by hand with a clear scheme or with computational tools, turns text into evidence. Digital humanities projects apply the same idea to novels, letters and archives.

6. Conceptual and philosophical analysis

In philosophy and theory, the method is argument: define terms precisely, reconstruct a position, test it against cases, and defend a conclusion against objections.

Research by YRI Fellows close to these fields

YRI mentors cover the social sciences and humanities as well as STEM. Among papers already accepted, the closest to political science is by Karan A., who built a Difference-in-Differences event study of how two geopolitical events, the 2016 Uri attack and 2025 Operation Sindoor, moved Indian aviation stocks against the market. His full paper was accepted at the World Finance & Banking Symposium 2026 in Riga, Latvia, six months after he enrolled, and he found opposite, statistically significant reactions to the two events. Read his story.

Saanvi K. used causal methods to estimate how individuals respond differently to the same intervention, the kind of question at the center of policy evaluation. Her paper was accepted at an IEEE conference. Read her story.

The methods these students used, comparison groups, careful event definitions and testing whether effects differ across people, are the same methods political scientists and sociologists use.

The Concord Review. A quarterly journal that publishes history research papers by secondary school students. It is history only, papers must have a single student author, and essays run 5,000 to 10,000 words. See our Concord Review guide.

Academic conferences. Political science, economics and interdisciplinary conferences review papers from any author. Papers that use computational or data methods can also fit IEEE and other computing venues.

Student journals. A number of journals publish student research in the social sciences and humanities. Check each journal's scope, fees and review process, and avoid any venue that promises acceptance for a payment.

Public writing. Op-eds and blogs are not research publications, but a published paper can be the basis for one.

John Locke Essay Competition. Its ten categories include Politics, History, International Relations, Law, Philosophy, Public Policy and Economics. It rewards argued essays rather than new data, and it is a strong first step. See our John Locke guide.

National History Day. A yearly history contest for students in grades 6 to 12, with a theme each year, local contests and a national contest. Students present their research through formats that include writing, performance and documentary film. The 2027 theme is "Innovation in History: Impact, Influence, Change."

Regeneron ISEF. The Behavioral and Social Sciences category includes a Sociology and Anthropology subcategory that covers work involving economics and systems of governance. Survey and data projects in sociology and political science can enter here.

YRI Global Research Proposal Competition. Free and open to high school students worldwide, in any subject including history, politics, philosophy and sociology. Students submit a 1,000 word research proposal by January 10, 2027, and first place wins a full YRI Fellowship scholarship. See the rules.

Writing an opinion piece. A paper needs evidence a reader can check.
Too broad a topic. "Democracy" is a field. "Turnout after one rule change in one state" is a question.
Only secondary sources. History papers gain strength from primary sources.
Cherry-picking. Report evidence that cuts against your argument and explain it.
Skipping consent. Interviews and surveys need consent and review.
Weak citations. Use one citation style consistently and cite every source you rely on.

Frequently asked questions

Yes. History has a dedicated journal for secondary students in The Concord Review, and social science papers using data can be accepted at academic conferences, as Karan A.'s finance symposium acceptance shows.

For survey and election projects, basic statistics helps a lot and can be learned during the project. History, philosophy and literature research rely more on sources and argument than on numbers.

Is a history paper different from a history essay for school?

Yes. A research paper asks a question nobody has fully answered, works from primary sources, and engages with what historians have already written.

What is the easiest way to start?

Pick one public dataset or one archive and one narrow question. Read what has already been written on it, then decide what you can add.

Do colleges value humanities research as much as STEM research?

Admissions readers look for depth and original work in the field you plan to study. A strong history or political science paper shows exactly that for a humanities or social science applicant.

The YRI Fellowship matches you 1:1 with a PhD mentor in your field, including sociology, political science, history, philosophy and literature, for 10 weeks of weekly sessions, about 5 to 8 hours of work a week. Your mentor helps you narrow the question, find the right sources or data, and build an argument that holds up. An editing team works through every draft, and a publishing team works to get the paper into a peer-reviewed venue, with free help until it is published.

87% of Fellows publish. A mentor letter of recommendation is included, no research experience is needed, and YRI has worked with 1,000+ students from 50+ countries. Decisions come within 48 hours.

Tuition is $2,997, or 3 payments of $999, with scholarships considered case by case. See pricing and more student stories.

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