A meta-analysis of electronic sensors applying in inventions of young students

International Exhibition for Young Inventors (IEYI) known as an invention exhibition encourages students to compete their creative inventions. In order to win the competition, some technologies have been used to enhance the compatibility to win the prize. Among those technologies, electronic sensors were most often employed in the invention design, thus, how young students applied different electronic sensors in different inventions were subjected to be meta-analyzed in this study. Data were collected from the 2015 IEYI participants' invention portfolios. After primary analysis, three electronic professors engaged in tri-angulation consistent analysis to achieve the inter-rate reliability. The results of the present study show that different types of electronic sensors were applied to various categories of inventions, for instance, light sensor with sound sensors have been used most often in the winners of 2015 IEYI. However, the implication of this study suggested that the appropriateness of applying electronic sensors was the key to win the invention competition of IEYI.