IRS Research Focus & Justification (Edited on 28 Aug)

SECONDARY ONE INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH STUDIES

Research Topic: Health in Singapore

Chosen Area of Focus: What is the average Sec 1 SST Student's sleeping duration compared to Sec 1 express students from other Secondary schools?

1. Framing our research topic

Our chosen area of focus is “What is the average Sec 1 SST Student's sleeping duration compared to Sec 1 express students from other Secondary schools?”. We have chosen this topic as many Secondary students have very short sleeping durations nowadays. Our parents and teachers are often concerned about our sleeping durations. A poll conducted in Singapore on 940 students in 26 secondary schools has revealed that 80% of them are getting less than eight hours of sleep daily. (AsiaOne, 2007) For IRS, we would like to find out if the SST Student’s sleeping duration is different from students from other express schools in Singapore. We will then be able to find out the causes of short sleep duration in SST so that we can tackle the problems and lengthen our sleeping durations.

1. Possible reasons why students from different schools have different sleeping durations are the difference in the curriculum hours and the workload. Long curriculum hours give students little time to do homework, resulting in less sleep. A survey carried out by The Bureau of Labor Statistics also revealed that a heavier workload leads to less sleep. (PharmacyTimes, 2004)

2. The advantages of SST’s curriculum is that SST is a member of the futuristic schools which take a different approach to learning. SST emphasises on applied learning instead of the normal textbook style learning. SST’s curriculum offers a more hands on approach compared to normal schools.

3. Some SST students may be spending too much time on the Learning Device, resulting in a short sleeping duration. Some possible solutions to the above mentioned problems would be to control the usage of the learning device for the SST students.

2. Reasons for choice of topic

1. We have chosen this topic, as we want to find out more about the sleeping durations of SST Students to assure parents that their children are have sufficient sleep compared to other schools.

2. This allows us to fulfil the requirements of the project task as it looks at the causes of students sleeping late at night as well.

3. This benefits those who do not get enough sleep to compare with the average sleeping time and from there, we can help that person to reflect on what makes him/her sleep so late at night. Students nowadays spent more time on social networking sites then doing what they are supposed to do especially during the holidays.

3. Feasibility of the research

1. There is a need for our research, as many people do not know If sst’s curriculum cause them to sleep later than their peers each day. Hence our research can help them to be more aware of their problems.

2. It is possible to complete this project as there are many students in Secondary one 2012 express cohort and SST that we can survey on.

3. The proposed course of action is logical and realistic as it can be completed with the help of some students who would be willing to do a survey and without hard work and group effort.

4. The research provides sufficient opportunities for generation of ideas as we will have to think of ways to do certain things in the project. As for analysis and evaluation of ideas, we certainly have many opportunities to analyse and information and evaluate ideas on how to go about deciding what to do next.

4. Manageability of the research

a.   This research requires a lot of teamwork and requires us to have good allocation of work in our team so that we can carry out our plans without any hindrance. We will also need to be very organised when we collect our data so that it will be easier for us to examine the results.

b.   Data collection could be one of the key problems faced by this research as there might be a problem with the number of people willing to participate in the surveys/ polls that we carry out.

c.   We anticipate difficulties along the way such as not being able to update each other about the latest happenings. To solve these difficulties, we have decided to upload our findings and our part of the project to our group’s personal Google document so that we can edit the document simultaneously.

5. Accessibility of the information required

a.   Information/knowledge that will be relevant to our research would be the amount of time Secondary ones usually spent on sleeping on average.

b.   We will be obtaining this information from different secondary sources depending on which one gives more reliable and useful information.

c.   Some alternatives we have thought of would be to ask friends and family members for information or from where or whom can we find the information we need.

d.   Some of the problem we anticipate is that some information might not be relevant to the project and that already is the best piece of information we found.

REFERENCES

AsiaOne, 2007 (Retrieved on August 28 2012)
http://www.asiaone.com/Health/Wellness+%2540+Work/Story/A1Story20070625-15642.html

PharmacyTimes, 2004 (Retrieved on August 10 2012)
http://www.pharmacytimes.com/publications/issue/2004/2004-12/2004-12-4841