Why your teen asks you to fill in their EPQ survey (and how to help without extra work)
Last Tuesday, I was scraping burnt pasta off a baking sheet after dinner when my 16-year-old leaned against the kitchen counter, phone in hand, and said she needed my help with her EPQ. I immediately paused, pan sauce still dripping off my spatula. I’d heard enough parent coffee chats to know an EPQ is that big independent project A-level students do, worth half a grade, meant to prep them for university-level work. I can barely keep track of my own work deadlines and the kid’s dentist appointments, what could I possibly contribute that wouldn’t tank her grade? Then she laughed and shook her head. “It’s just a survey. You don’t need any special knowledge, it takes two minutes. Promise.”
I took the phone, and her topic made sense right away: she was studying the gap between how parents think teens use TikTok and how teens actually report using it. The questions were straightforward: “How many hours a day do you think the average 16-year-old spends on social media?” and “Do you think teen TikTok use mostly negatively affects school work?” I clicked through multiple choice options that matched what I’d observed from my kid and her friends, hit submit, and handed the phone back. It was done before the oven timer even went off for the chocolate chip cookies she was baking.
Over the next two weeks, I saw three separate requests pop up in our year 12 parent WhatsApp group: “My daughter needs 12 more respondents for her EPQ survey, can anyone fill it in here? No prior knowledge needed, 5 minutes tops.” One mum replied saying she’d put it off for three days because she thought she had to read up on the topic (it was public attitudes toward youth mental health services) first, and was stressed she’d get the answers wrong. Another joked that she always ignores these because she thinks they’re just kids asking for free work to get out of doing their own research. That got me thinking, because I’d had exactly those same thoughts before my own kid asked me.
I asked Mia that weekend, while we were folding laundry, why all these projects need random parent surveys anyway, if no knowledge is needed. She explained that for most EPQs that use primary research, the whole point is to get the views of ordinary people, not experts. If her question is about what parents think, then what I think as an ordinary parent is exactly the data she needs. I don’t need a degree in media studies to answer what my perspective is. That’s why “no knowledge needed” isn’t a cop-out—it’s exactly what the research requires. Last week, I saw a mum in a local parent group share that she’d spent an hour reading up on UK net zero policy because her son’s EPQ survey was about public perception of climate action. She thought she needed to get the answers “right” to help him. I commented that if it says no knowledge needed, he just wants what she actually thought before she did the reading, and she replied back an hour later saying she’d wasted 60 minutes for no reason, and it was done in 4 minutes once she just answered honestly.
Most of the time, this whole thing is way less work than we parents make it out to be, and there are a few small, concrete habits that make it easier for everyone. First, if you can’t do it right when your kid asks, tell them a specific time you’ll get to it, and ask them to send the link to your email or save it in your phone notes. I used to just say “sure” and then completely forget, and then Mia would be panicking the night before her deadline because she was missing 10 responses. Now if I’m in the middle of work or dinner, I say “Send me the link now and I’ll fill it in during my coffee break at 10 tomorrow” and that’s that. No forgetting, no last-minute stress.
Second, if you’re worried you’ll answer wrong, stop. The only wrong answer is a dishonest one. The student doesn’t care if your opinion is “wrong” by some expert standard—they just want what you actually think. If it says no knowledge needed, that’s not a trick, it’s a guarantee you can’t mess it up. If you don’t want to answer a demographic question or share any personal info, most surveys are fully anonymous, and you can skip anything that makes you uncomfortable without messing up the data.
Third, if they ask you to share the survey to your parent group or social media, just copy the text they give you. Most of the time they already wrote that it’s quick and no knowledge needed, so you don’t have to write a big explanation or badger people. Just post it and that’s enough.
I’ve also had people say that asking random people to fill in surveys is lazy, but that’s not true. Getting people to respond to surveys is one of the hardest parts of doing any primary research, even for professional academics with big research budgets. Teens doing their first big independent project are just learning that, and asking people they know is the easiest way to get a decent sample size. It’s not lazy, it’s just how research works when you’re a student.
It’s been a month since I filled in Mia’s survey, and she’s still collecting responses for a classmate’s project on secondary school lunch preferences. I still sometimes scroll past a survey request in the group chat when I’m busy and forget to go back, but I try to make time for it when I can. It’s never taken me more than 5 minutes, and it’s a small thing that makes a big difference for a kid who’s stressing about meeting their project deadline. There’s no big lesson to it, no grand parenting win. It’s just one of those small, ordinary jobs that comes with having a teen in secondary school these days.
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