Disease Detectives
Participants will use their investigative skills in the scientific study of disease, injury, health, and disability in populations or groups of people.
Approximate Time: 30 minutes
There is only one level of competition for Disease Detectives:
- Disease Detectives : Grades 6, 7, and 8.
In addition to all the general contest rules stated by North South Foundation, the following rules are applicable for the Science Olympiad Competitions.
- The judges are in complete control of the competition and their decisions are final.
- Contestants are responsible to bring their own pencils and erasers.
- Contestants are seated by the badge number order from left to right.
- One 8.5” x 11” sheet of paper that may contain information on both sides in any form and from any source along with two stand-alone non-programmable, non-graphing calculators (Class II).
- All sheets (including question and answer sheets) should be returned at the end of the contest. It is the responsibility of the contestant to write the badge number on the answer sheet.
- Unclear and illegible writing might be open for misinterpretation. Contestants are expected to write clearly and legibly.
- There will NOT be any partial credits for answers. There are NO negative points for any incorrect answers. If the final answer is incorrect, zero points are awarded, and if the answer is correct, one point is given.
- No recording of any kind is allowed - violations will lead to automatic disqualification from any Science Olympiad for three years.
Phase I (Written):
- Each contestant is given a booklet containing 25 questions and has 30 minutes to answer them.
- The questions may be multiple choice type or need one/a few words as answer.
- For multiple choice type question, the contestant has to choose the best answer from the choices and transfer the letter of choice to the answer sheet. There can be only one answer that is clearly written.
- When necessary for few questions, one/more words must be legibly written as answers.
Tiebreaker Rules:
-
To break the ties in selecting the ranks, the scheme outlined below is followed in the order given:
- Phase I scores
- Phase I score among questions 21-25
- Phase I score among questions 16-20
- Phase I score among questions 11-15
- Phase I score among questions 1-10
- If the above steps fail to break the tie in question, the foundation may use additional measures including date of birth to resolve the tie.
Winners and Ranks:
- The Foundation recognizes and awards only the top 3 ranks. No monetary awards are given.
This event addresses three topics related to disease, injury, health, and disability in populations or groups of people. Each part should count approximately equally towards a team’s final score. Questions should be process-oriented and involve skills in evaluation and interpretation. Matching pathogens with specific diseases (i.e. – What causes X disease?) or knowledge of signs, symptoms or epidemiologic characteristics such as incubation or latency periods or infectious dose is not part of this event. However, it is appropriate to provide this information as background information and expect competitors to be able to use it.
Students will be asked to interpret graphs, basic data and will be asked to give suggestions regarding outbreak investigation.
Students will be given data related to disease distributions and will be asked to interpret it.
Suggested Resources
- Science Olympiad -SciOly.org, soinc.Com
- Leon Gordis -Epidemiology