How to Do Business Research in High School: A Step-by-Step Guide, Plus Business Research Opportunities for High School Students

You don't need access to a university laboratory, specialist software, or an established company to conduct meaningful business research in high school.

You could investigate why teenagers prefer certain brands, whether a pricing strategy affects purchasing decisions, or how businesses are adapting to artificial intelligence. But how do you turn an interesting business topic into an actual research project?

This guide walks you through the process, from developing a research question to collecting data, analysing evidence, and presenting your findings. New to the subject? Start with Research Without the White Coat, which explains what business research is and how it applies to real-world decisions, and the high school research playbook, which covers the skills research builds. This post stays on method.

Step 1: Choose a Specific Business Research Question

A common mistake is starting with a topic that's too broad to investigate properly. "Social media marketing" is a subject, not a research question. Consider how you could narrow it:

• Broad topic: social media marketing.
• Better question: how do TikTok influencers affect teenage purchasing decisions?
• More focused question: how does perceived influencer authenticity relate to purchase intention among high school students?

The final question identifies what you're investigating, who you're studying, and the relationship you want to understand. Other business research questions could include:

• How do student discounts influence brand preferences among teenagers?
• What factors affect customer loyalty to independent coffee shops?
• How have major retailers changed their pricing strategies in response to inflation?
• How does AI-generated advertising influence consumer trust?

A useful test: can you realistically gather evidence to answer your question? If not, narrow it further. For questions drawn from this year's business news, see our business research topics for 2027.

Step 2: Choose Your Research Method

Once you have a question, decide how you'll answer it. Different business questions require different research methods. Here are five accessible options for high school students:

You can also combine methods. A student researching coffee shop loyalty might survey customers and compare the rewards programmes offered by local competitors. The important thing is to choose a method that answers your question, rather than collecting information without knowing what you'll do with it.

Step 3: Create a Simple Research Plan

Before collecting data, write down four things:

1. Research question: what exactly are you investigating?
2. Evidence: what information do you need?
3. Method: how will you collect and analyse it?
4. Scope: which consumers, companies, markets or time periods will you study?

Imagine you're researching whether shipping costs or discount sizes matter more to student shoppers. Your plan might look like this:

• Question: which factor matters more when high school students choose an online clothing retailer - shipping fees or discounts?
• Participants: students at your school who shop online.
• Method: an anonymous questionnaire with consistent purchasing scenarios.
• Analysis: compare responses across the different scenarios.

This gives your project a clear direction before you begin.

Step 4: Collect Reliable Evidence

Business research generally uses two categories of evidence.

Primary Research: Collecting Your Own Data

Primary research involves gathering information directly through surveys, interviews, observations, or experiments. If you're creating a survey, avoid leading questions:

• Leading: "Don't you agree that influencer advertisements are less trustworthy?"
• Neutral: "How trustworthy do you consider advertisements from social media influencers?"

The second question allows participants to form their own judgements. Keep questions clear, test your questionnaire with a few people before distributing it, and record how participants were recruited. Follow school requirements for consent, privacy, and research involving minors. The Pew Research Center's guide to writing survey questions is a useful reference: it shows how small wording changes shift the answers people give.

Secondary Research: Using Existing Information

Secondary research involves examining information that's already publicly available. Useful free sources include:

• SEC EDGAR for US public company filings, including the annual 10-K report.
• Companies House for the accounts and filings of UK companies.
• FRED, run by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, for economic time series such as interest rates, inflation and exchange rates.
• Central bank statistics, such as the Bank of England Database, for interest rates, exchange rates, and money and credit data.
• The U.S. Census Bureau for US business and economic data, from retail sales to county business patterns.
• World Bank Open Data for country-level economic indicators.
• UN Comtrade for international trade flows by product and country.
• The Pew Research Center for consumer and social trends.
• Company annual reports, investor presentations, and published academic research.

If you're reading a 10-K for the first time, the SEC's own guide to reading a 10-K explains each section. Start with Item 1 (what the business does and who it competes with), Item 1A (risk factors) and Item 7 (management's discussion of the year's results), then use Item 8's financial statements to check the numbers.

Prioritise original sources wherever possible. A company's financial filing, for example, is generally more reliable for its reported revenue than an unsourced social media post. Record your sources as you go so you can reference them accurately later.

Step 5: Analyse Your Data

Collecting information is only half the project. Research requires you to interpret what the evidence actually shows, and your analysis depends on the method you chose:

• Surveys: use Excel or Google Sheets to calculate response percentages, compare groups, and identify patterns.
• Interviews: group responses into recurring themes, such as price sensitivity, convenience, or brand trust.
• Company research: compare financial results, marketing approaches, customer segments, or strategic decisions across a defined period.
• Competitor analysis: evaluate each business using the same criteria so your comparisons remain consistent.

Back to the online shopping example: after collecting responses, you might compare how often students choose each purchasing scenario, then examine whether preferences differ between groups.

But be careful with conclusions. A convenience sample of students from one school cannot establish what all teenagers prefer. Similarly, a survey measuring preferences does not automatically prove what causes actual purchasing behaviour.

Step 6: Turn Your Findings Into a Conclusion

A strong research conclusion should answer three questions:

• What did you find?
• What evidence supports it?
• What does it mean for the business problem you investigated?

If your survey showed that respondents consistently preferred free shipping over an equivalent discount, you could discuss what that finding might suggest for a retailer targeting a similar audience.

However, you should also acknowledge limitations. Perhaps your survey included only 40 students. Maybe respondents were all from the same school. Perhaps stated preferences would differ from real spending decisions. These details matter because they establish how far your conclusions can reasonably extend.

Your goal isn't to prove your original assumption correct. It's to develop a conclusion that follows from the evidence.

Step 7: Write Your Business Research Report

You don't need to produce a university-level dissertation for your first project. What matters is that someone else can understand your question, method, evidence, and conclusions. A straightforward structure is:

1. Introduction: your research question and its business context.
2. Background: existing research and relevant information.
3. Methodology: how you collected and analysed evidence.
4. Findings: results, tables, charts, and observed patterns.
5. Discussion: what the findings mean, and their limitations.
6. Conclusion: your main answer and its possible implications.

Include citations for external sources and explain how your evidence was obtained. Pick one referencing style and use it throughout - APA 7th edition is common in business writing, and it is the style the Hinksey Business Essay Competition asks for.

Your finished project could become a research paper, business report, presentation, or the foundation for a more advanced investigation. If you're interested in academic publication, our guide to getting research published in high school explains what to consider before submitting your work.

Where Are the Business Research Opportunities for High School Students?

Once you know the method, there are several places to use it:

• School research courses: AP Research (which requires AP Seminar first) ends in a 4,000-5,000 word paper, and the IB Extended Essay can be written in business management or economics.
• Essay competitions: a case-study essay on a real organisation is business research with a deadline. Our calendar of business and economics competitions lists this cycle's options.
• Mentored research programmes, which pair you with a mentor and a structured timeline. At Hinksey Labs, small teams research a challenge facing a real organisation and each student writes their own paper; the Hinksey High School Research Playbook explains how to judge the routes.
• Publication: student journals that accept business and economics papers are listed in where high school students can publish research.

What Does a Mentor Add to Business Research?

You can start a project on your own with public datasets, consumer surveys and case studies. The steps that are hardest to judge alone are Step 1's narrowing, Step 2's choice of method and Step 6's limits, and that is where feedback from an experienced researcher makes the most difference. A mentor can also speak to how you worked, which is what a recommendation letter needs.

At Hinksey Labs, high school students do business research in small teams of four to seven, mentored by Ivy League and Oxbridge PhDs and MBAs. Research Fundamentals (4 weeks) covers business and research fundamentals, market analysis and competitive analysis, and ends in a foundational research paper. Research Scholars (12 weeks) adds business models, marketing, finance and AI, with each student writing a full research paper on a challenge faced by a real organisation.

The Takeaway

Business research in high school doesn't have to start with a groundbreaking idea or a connection to a major company - in a mentored programme such as Hinksey Labs, the organisation and its challenge come with the programme, or you can choose one yourself. Start with a question you genuinely want to answer. Choose a method that fits, collect reliable evidence, analyse it carefully, and communicate what you discover.

The difference between researching a topic and conducting research is having a clear question, a defensible method, and evidence supporting your conclusions. That's where meaningful business research begins.

Ready to try the method on a real organisation, with a mentor alongside you? Explore our business research programmes