Annex B - Research Justification

RESEARCH JUSTIFICATION

YEAR ONE INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH STUDIES

Research Topic: Health

Chosen Area of Focus: The Sleeping durations of Secondary school express students in Singapore

1. Framing our research topic

• Our chosen area of focus is “
  sleeping durations of Secondary school express students in Singapore
  ”. We have chosen this area of focus as SST students spend most of their time on the learning device. This might cause them to trail off to social networking sites while doing homework. Our group feels that SST students spend too much time on the learning device, and therefore sleep later than students from other mainstream schools. An article found on the internet shows that "Computers and tablets affect sleep". (Gaudin, 2011) 

• Possible reasons for problems related to lack of sleep are mainly the long term use of computers and also other electronic devices. 
• The advantages are that students can keep updated with the latest information that the school has to spread out and also keep in contact with friends and teachers to ask them questions about how to do the assignment. Doing work on the computer also causes some people to be more organised.
• Some students spend way too much time on the computer at social networking sites and neglect their studies. Hence, some possible solutions to the above mentioned problems would be to limit the amount of time spent on the computers and set aside some time for other things.

2. Reasons for choice of topic

• We have chosen this topic, as we want to find out more about how use of the Learning device can lead to shorter sleep duration of the students of SST compared to other students from other schools. 
• This allows us to fulfill the requirements of the project task as the project task looks at how computers affect sleeping pattern which is what we are trying to find out.
• This topic benefits society as people will know the limit and will know when not to use computers and when to use computers and students know how to manage their sleeping patterns by using less computers.

3. Feasibility of the research

• There is a need for our research, as many people do not know when to stop the moment they start using the computer, especially students. Hence, our research can help to let these people know when to stop.
• It is possible to carry out and complete the project, as there are many students in the school that we can survey on and interview.
• 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 with our hardwork and group effort.
• The research provides sufficient opportunity for generation of ideas, as we will constantly have to think of ways to do certain things in the project. As for analysis and evaluation of ideas, we will certainly have many opportunities to analyse information and evaluate ideas on how to go about deciding what to do next.

4. Manageability of the research

• The timeline for the different components of the project will be decided later based on the situation then. But overall, the project will be done as quickly and carefully as we can, trying our best not to go out of point and staying as close to the topic as possible.
• This research provides sufficient opportunity for group work as we will need to discuss a lot of matters regarding the project, for example who will be assigned to do what component of the project and we will have to work together. 
• We do anticipate some difficulties along the way, such as poor communication among the group members and lack of data. We intend to cope with these difficulties by trying to get the group to go and upload their findings and their part of the project onto wikispaces.com

5. Accessibility of the information required

• Information/knowledge that will be relevant to our research would be the amount of time people usually spend on computers on average each day.
• We will be obtaining this information from primary and secondary sources, depending on which one gives more reliable and useful information.
• Some alternatives that we have thought of would be to ask others for information or where can we find the information that we need.
• Some problems we anticipate while gathering my materials would be that the information that we can find is not entirely relevant to our project and that that is already the closest piece of information among all others that we have found.

REFERENCES

[1] Gaudin, S. (2011, March 7). Can't sleep? blame your computer, cell phone. Retrieved from http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9213647/Can_t_sleep_Blame_your_computer_cell_phone