Social Psychology (Qualitative Research)

Words from the Webmaster

2010-05-04T20:48:00.002+08:00

Dear all,

This blog will not be updated from today onwards as the course that provides its posts is no longer running.

Regards
Henry Khiat

Words from the Webmaster

2009-09-07T15:50:00.002+08:00

Dear all,

Once again, another two batches of students have completed the course on the basics of qualitative social research. This time round, some selected participant observational research done by the students are put up. At the same time, students' video demonstrations of the various persuasion techniques in social psychology are included. Hope you enjoy them!

Regards

Henry Khiat

Persuasion Techniques: Technique based on Scarity

2009-09-07T15:11:00.003+08:00

To limit the supply of a product or service in some way to increase scarcity of an offer. Because it’s a proven fact that scarcity sells. It’s that ageless law of supply and demand. The less the supply is, the greater the demand will be.

http://www.michelfortin.com/use-scarcity-to-sell-not-scare/

Persuasion Techniques: Bait and Switch

2009-09-07T14:37:00.003+08:00

In retail sales, a bait and switch is a form of fraud in which the party putting forth the fraud lures in customers by advertising a product or service at an unprofitably low price, then reveals to potential customers that the advertised good is not available but that a substitute is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bait_and_switch

Persuasion Techniques: That's not all Technique

2009-09-07T14:11:00.003+08:00

When offering or conceding something to somebody, rather than give it to them as a final item, give it in incremental pieces. Do not allow them to respond to each piece you give them -- keep on offering more.

http://changingminds.org/techniques/general/sequential/not_all.htm

Persuasion Techniques: Low Ball Technique

2009-09-07T13:06:00.002+08:00

The Low-ball works by first gaining commitment to an idea or item at a lower cost than you really intend to charge, then, using the fact that people will behave consistently with their earlier commitments you change the agreement.
The strategy creates an illusion of irrevocability so that a person believes that a decision made (at lower costs) cannot be reversed, he/she may consider a handshake the close of the deal and therefore have a responsibility to commit to it to the very end.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-Ball

Persuasion Techniques: Foot in the door

2009-09-07T11:19:00.003+08:00

Foot-in-the-door technique (FITD) is a compliance tactic that involves getting a person to agree to a large request by first setting them up by having that person agree to a modest request.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot-in-the-door_technique

Persuasion Techniques: Door in the Face

2009-09-07T11:09:00.003+08:00

The door-in-the-face (DITF) technique is a persuasion method. Compliance with the request of concern is enhanced by first making an extremely large request that the respondent will obviously turn down. The respondent is then more likely to accede to a second, more reasonable request than if this second request were made without the first, extreme request. There is also a feeling of guilt associated with the DITF technique of sequential requests (Cialdini, 2000). A person is also more likely to agree with the second request because they feel guilty for having rejected the first request. A reference point (or framing) construal can also explain this phenomenon, as the initial bad offer sets a reference point from which the second offer looks like an improvement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door-in-the-face_technique

Participant Observation: Home 7

2009-09-07T11:07:00.001+08:00

I sat down in my living room to watch the tv while eating my dinner. I’ve noticed things that I had never noticed them before at home. Habits of my parents and sister.
Basic Info. My Father is a businessman who spend lots of time reading newspaper. Mother is a housewife and sister is an K1 student.
I took my dinner and sat down to watch tv at channel U together with family. When I started eating, my mom came sitting beside me and asked me about the dinner. Like how is the dinner, nice or not. While father sitting on his rocking chair reading newspaper. Sister is also eating her dinner when I started the observation. She always walk around the house, playing with her toy and coming for the rice every few minutes after playing. One thing about her is that I realized she plays with her toy with lots of sound effects. She even mixes different types of toy that doesn’t match together. Example is she was playing with her Barbie doll together with her block stacking. I don’t understand what is she playing at all. While she is playing, she spent 50% of her time trying to bring her fringe from the front to the back. And she often forgot about the rice in her mouth, my mom had to remind her to quickly swallow then she will remember to chew the rice in her mouth. Dad reading newspaper sometimes take a short look at what my sister is doing and will engross in the tv for a few seconds when something “weird” happen in the show. Example, the show showing a mom bringing crystal mickey and play it at another table and suddenly the phone rang. The moment when the phone rang, my dad would assume that something will happen. He actually said that the crystal would drop down on the floor when the mom was answering the phone call. But it doesn’t happen, then my dad will go back continue to read his newspaper. Mom sitting beside me who is suppose to feed my sister dinner was engross in the tv show. She spent 80% of the time watching the tv than feeding my sister. One thing I observed from her is that she always peels her heel’s skin. She peels them and place them at the side of the chair. Surprisingly nobody change the tv channel at all. I don’t know why.
When I finished my dinner, my sister finished hers too. I bring those plates to wash in the kitchen. Sister followed me and come to open the fridge to look for jelly and sweets. I asked her not to open it as I’m afraid that she might catch cold from the fridge. She ignored everything that I’ve said. She saw orange juice and shout for mom to drink the orange juice. My mom came over and take a look. She come beside me 1st and throw her skins into the bin beside me. At the same time bring sister back to living room. Sister come back again, mom gave up and decided to cut some fruits for us to eat. I finished my washing 1st. I took my soya bean and sat in living to drink. Sister keep asking for juice. Mom insisted not until she act crying. Mom gave up due to the fake crying. I turn my head and look at my sister, she had that “winning” face. Mom finnish cutting fruits and bring out the juice for sister and the fruits. Dad doesn’t eat the fruits at all. Still reading newspaper. I don’t know whats so interesting about that newspaper. Mom and sis didn’t eat the fruit. Sister is whining about mom not giving her juice at 1st. I thought im the only one eating, swallowed half of them. And then wash my fork and put my soya bean back to fridge. I saw mom and sis eating the fruits when I’m back to living room. Sis don’t really eat. She pass the fruits around for us to eat instead of her eating herself. Mom would accept her offer but dad asked her to put on the plate 1st. sis didn’t obey the instruction, she give it to me instead. When she is passing to me, I realized that she hold the fruit from grabbing it. Just like grabbing a pole instead of using only thumb and 1st finger to hold it. Mom is watching tv and eating at the same time. When the fruits left with only a little, then dad start taking them and eat. He put down his newspaper to eat. He folded the newspaper nicely and placed at the place where we put our old newspaper. When he was eating he kept asking sis questions like, are you full? What did you eat in school today? Did you quarrel with allicia today? Did teacher lim scold you? First 2 questions are answer within 2sec. but the last 2 questions she took around 10sec to answer. And her answer is no. then mom started asking her to learn spelling, she quickly go to mom.
The tv show had ended. Its playing the ending song. Sister will try to sing, mom and dad will watch the credit. And I went back off to my room.

Participant Observation: Home 6

2009-09-07T11:06:00.001+08:00

By looking at the sleeping arrangements, I notice that it will be convenient for my mother to wake up early in the morning. She is sleeping near the door of the master bedroom. She will not cause extra noise like the footsteps sound or the squeaking sound of the bed when moving. My mum will always wake up at 0530 in the morn to prepare for the day. It is mostly the job of a mother to prepare for the family in the morning. The reason is that she is the housewife of the family, she does not need to work or attend school outside and she knows every single’s need.
The moon still shines up high, so my mum had to use the kitchen to see clearly. Arrangements of the kitchen were decided by my mum, as she will eventually be the head of the kitchen. The first thing that she would do is to boil the water first, in order to brew fragrance hot coffee. Filled up the water, she placed it on the stove, taking her a little bit more time with some noise produced, knocking on the stove to place it nicely. I can see that she is still not wide awake. After that, she prepares the breakfast; gather all the ingredients on the table, for her convenience to get the food to do sandwiches. Scramble egg, kaya, butter, cheese, all ingredients were prepared to cater to the different taste buds of the family members.
Breakfast done, she went on to wake up my two sisters at 0615. Although their schools are near, both of them at Ang Mo Kio, a less than half an hour to reach their school. My mum still insist on waking them up early in the morning. She knows that both of her children like to drag their time. My youngest sister, Min Yi will give excuses that she had not enough sleep whereby she always sleep at 10pm. It’s kind of weird that a normal person with a full eight hours of sleep can’t get enough of it.
Time 0640, while Min Yi do her last minute packing before going to school, mum went to woke up my young sister, who also likes to do things slowly, too. My mum is very confident to wake her up on time because she has her method. With the anxious voice and reaction, she faked her by telling her that she overslept and she have to wake up immediately before she is late for school. For my Min Qi, whether it is real or not, she would jumped of her bed and rush off to wash up, instead of lying on the bed, thinking that the time will wait for her.
Min Yi laughed, as she saw Min Qi pacing passed her to the bathroom. She, as always, got tricked by mum again. This is Min Qi’s character, she don’t like to be late. She feels that being late is a form of disrespect for the teacher. When one person is late, it means that the person is not serious on their work. Teachers also woke up early for their students in order to impart them the knowledge; students should also at least respect the teacher and be thankful to go to school on time.
Breakfast time is always the time where my two sisters update my mum with their latest ongoing news. They too, get their allowance in the morning every week. They will also get their parent’s signature and pass important notices from the school to them. They choose this time to tell my parents their exam results too. That is the only time where my parents are least focus as they just woke up from a nice sleep, they will not be too angry.
My sisters both left home around 0715, calculated that both of them will reach school before 0745 for the flag raising ceremony. Both of them gave my mum a kiss on the cheek, a form of saying goodbye.
At time 0720, the alarm clock rang, it belongs to the head of the family, my dad’s. He wakes up on his own, only at times when he is too tired; he needs my mum to call him up. He will always be tired when he did not sleep enough the night before. Approximately, whenever he slept mid-night or later. To have an alarm clock rather than my mum’s wake up call, is to show his children that we can wake up independently every day. There is no need to pester mum to wake people up every morning. I can see that it is a form of care toward my mum, not to let her wake up so early in the morning for other family members.
By 0800, my dad will be out to work. I see no unhappy face in his, but rather a fighting spirit within him burning. Because there is a need to fight on for his daughters future.

Participant Observation: Home 5

2009-09-07T11:05:00.001+08:00

During dinner, everything could be clearly observed. Dad was sitting in his desk, all down on his work, while Mum and Sister were scooping the rice for everyone in the family. Brother was as usual, down on the sofa comfortably looking at his favourite cartoon. There was no intention for both of them to help Mum and Sister. It was only when all the dishes were served, that Mum called everyone to the dining table for table. From this, it is evident that the males seem to have a greater position that the females in our family. Mum did not ask for help from the males, and did not have the intention to.

The dining begins. Dad started up with his chopsticks digging hungrily into the dish, while Brother and Sister carefully announced:”Let’s eat everyone!”. Mum simply just ate after everyone else did. The male of the family had to start eating before everyone else does. It is very clear that the father of every household now has the power to control activities and is the leading character. There is a clear distinct level between males and females. During dining, Dad started a series of questions regarding the studies of his children and they answered accordingly. They answered his questions carefully and made sure that they were complete and to their dad’s satisfaction.

Finishing dinner, Dad left the table and continued to proceed with his work at the desk. His bowls were soon cleared by Sister, who has also finished her dinner then. We can see that the children had to obey their parents regardless of anything in the household. After a while, Mum waited till everyone finished dinner before clearing everything into the basin and started cleaning them. Women in the household are usually delegated to do labour such as washing and cleaning of different items. This is also usually the social status of women in households as housewives.

Mum bought durians home for dessert and requested for help from Dad. Dad then went on to opening up the durians while Mum started placing them nicely in plates. In terms of manual labour, men seem to be the dominating character as they are required to perform jobs such as repairing, fixing etc.

After desserts, everyone went on to the sofa to watch television. The channel was switched on and everyone tuned in attentively. After a while, Dad started flickering with his newspaper and giving a bored look. He then suggested to watch a DVD since it was a Friday night, and even selected his favourite movie “George of the Jungle”. However, everyone was engrossingly watching the channel and did not had the intention to switch to watching DVD. Then, seeing that there was no response, Dad fumed up and shut the channel. Mum, seeing this, quickly went to insert the DVD into the player while the children kept quiet, looking lost and sad that they missed their favourite show. The selection of activities was done by the father in the household. No one attempted to stop him and had to listen to him reluctantly.

Participant Observation: Home 4

2009-09-07T11:04:00.001+08:00

The fight for the remote control was not as intense as it turns out to be, simply because my dad always gets it. From the duration of my observation to the end of it, it seems that my dad always gets control of the remote control. By there is a reason to it. Simply because my dad was the breadwinner and he dosen’t have much time to watch his favourite show, so when he is at home, nobody fights with him for it! So it is either Korean dramas or singing competitions for all family members.
The first part of the observation starts at 7pm. My father has just woke up from his nap after coming back home at 3pm. As he sits down on his favourite position, the screen changes to Channel U for his favourite korean drama, Likeable or Not. My sister grumbles about the plot dragging on for too long. Probably out of respect for my dad, she did not reach out and fight for control of the remote control. Finally, the first part of the commercial arrived. This is when dad relinquished control of the remote control. As he relinquished control he said: “Only 1 minute, watch anything but remember the korean drama”. After this, he heads to the toilet. At this very moment, my sister grabbed the remote control and switched to Channel 8 for a peek on her favourite Hong Kong drama. But after 1 minute, dad appeared on the dot and said politely: “Could we change back to Channel U?” Right at this moment, My sister unwillingly relinquished control of the remote control and it is back to Channel U for the korean drama. My sister then had to give up her favourite drama, but she said: “ Pa, since you are working the evening shift tommorow, you won’t be able to watch it, so you better enjoy yourself.” My dad smiled and turned his attention back to the television.
As the show reaches the climax, the screen changes to show the commercials. Dad grumbled: Why do they always show the commercials?” After grumbling, he went for his usual toilet breaks. This is when my sister quickly switch over to Channel 8 for her Hong Kong drama. This time round, dad took a little bit longer than usual, he returned 4 minutes later and he took over the control of the remote control. But by then , the korean drama had resumed and he grumbled for missing a small part of it. The show progressed on and everyone in the family continued to be engrossed in the drama. About 15 minutes later, it is the commercial break again! As usual, dad relinquishes control of the remote control and went to have a quick dinner. This time round my sister did not turn to Channel 8 for her favourite drama, she said: “ Ai Yah! No point turning , i had already missed a large chunk of my show, it is not interesting to continue anymore.” As she finished, she heads back to her room.

Dad quickly finished his dinner and just in time, the korean drama is back on screen again. He the went back to his favourite place and sat down to watch the show with my mum as my sister remains in her room. 10 minutes later, the korean drama ends at 7.55pm. At this moment, my sister trooped out from her room, this time round, dad switched to Channel 8 because another of his favourite show was showing. This time round my dad and sister was not fighting for control of the remote control anymore as they both share the same liking for this show. This show that they are watching was a taiwanese variety show where well-known singers were invited to the show to compete in a “Don’t forget the lyrics” lookalike competition where they must carry on and fill in the empty blanks to a missing part of a song.
The first singer emerges and picked a 70’s song. My dad then exclaimed: This is my favourite song!” Then he started to sing along and unsuprisingly, dad now the missing lyrics and urged the contestant to follow his answer. In the end, both my dad and the contestant were right. Then the show carried on. After a few more songs, it is the commercial break and dad takes a break and leaves the sofa to get a drink while my sister continues to sit in her favourite sit without leaving for a break.
The show resumed in about three minutes time, Then dad slowly trooped back and sat on his favouite place and resumed watching the variety show. This time round the singer picked a song of a techno genre, this time round my father complained about it being noisy, while my sister enjoyed it. After this, the show continued. The next was again one of dad’s favourite song and he started to sing along with the contestant, but this time the contestant did not follow my dad’s answer and he got koncked out. Then dad exclaimed: “ When I was listening to this song, you are not born yet!” Then all of us started to laugh about it.
After 20 minutes had passed and the time reaches 9pm, this marks the end of the variety show and the end of my observation. At the end of my observation I asked my sister and mother if the shows that dad was watching are shows that they really wanted to watch, my sister said: “ Ai Yah! Why fight with pa for the tv, he rarely gets to watch his favourite shows as he is working. He must have some time to relax.” Then my mother answered: “ It isn’t about what show i’m watching, it is about spending time with your pa.”
From this observation, I discovered that dad had a tight control of the remote control. The whole family did not fight for it as they knew my dad worked very hard to support the family, so when he has time to watch his favourite shows, they don’t fight for the control of the remote control with him. From this observation, I discovered that it was not that it was not my dad’s dominance that resulted in him getting control of the remote control, it was more of the whole family acknowledging the hardwork he had put in to support the family and the respect they had for my dad. It made me realised that you do not win over something by force, you win somthing through the respect that people have for you.

Participant Observation: Home 3

2009-09-07T11:03:00.001+08:00

She is watching the television now. Channel U a Taiwanese show that she had watched for more than 2 years consecutively. Sitting on the nylon stretchable chair, she comfortably watches it everyday without fail. She plucks the stems of the vegetables for dinner later on while watching the series. Without fail, she will comment about the characters in the show and cursed at the antagonist. The show finishes and she went into the kitchen to cook her dishes.

Dad comes home at 615pm. He came home with some mails in the hand and his uniform: REDWOOD. He walks into the kitchen and talked to mom about his work. And mom will listen attentively to him while she cooks her dishes.

A huge pot of soup is always on the menu. Brother is always on the computer, playing games. Mom nagged at him “Do you want to do your homework! Can you listen?” Brother will reply: wait la! And she saw my shoe on the floor. She nags again “ah boy! Your shoe you want or not! Don’t want and I will throw it away?” I just replied with an “Orh!” The cycle is never ending. Mom never stops nagging at people. Brother will always play his computer games at this period of time. Dad just didn’t say anything and go straight to the bedroom bathroom to bath. After the shower, he goes into his bedroom to rest and check his documents.

7pm, she turned on the television to continue the show on Korean and watched the show while she cooks. Sitting on the chair comfortably, she only continues her cooking whenever there is commercial breaks. Dad came into the living room and sat down on the sofa and watched the series with my mom in the living room. Although he did not watch this series a lot, but he still do watch it sometimes whenever he can after work.

800pm, he went to take a shower and while mom continues with the last dish, soup.
810pm, the dinner starts. I seriously think she always cooked so slowly and this is the main reason for our family members being obese. Eat late. Mom is the one who get the rice and set everything ready for dinner. The dinner table was brought out to the living room and the newspaper was placed above it. This is a norm in our house so that we could actually just clear the used dirty newspaper and not needing to clear the tables with a wet cloth.
I went to have dinner with them while watching the television. After that she calls for everyone to have out dinner. Brother still got hooked to the computer. She nags again.

After dinner mom keeps the dishes and dad washed the dishes. 9 o’clock and I went back to my room while watching them and dad took the remote control and start to click, changing the channels constantly. They really have a great task of multi-tasking when dad opens the mails that he took from the letter box earlier and read them. Brother is still on the computer. Eyes attentively on the screen, literally.
10.00pm, dad tune into channel 8 and watched the news. They just sat there quietly and commented on much news that came about. She nagged at my brother again to tell him to do homework. Brother got really pissed off and responded: Hah Nah! Shut up la!

It is 1030pm. Mom sat on the floor leaning against the wall, bringing the fruits in and cut in front of the television watching the news with dad. She laid newspaper below the fruits too to prevent mopping later “Ah boy ah! You want fruits or not!”(Referring to me) Brother heard it and went from the computer table to the floor and sits around the place and start enjoying the honeydew. Meanwhile mom was cutting the pineapple.
I went to eat the fruits and said I have something to do so I came back. Just now my mom passed the honeydew to my dad. Mom continued to sit on the floor and still watching the show on the television. She continues to nag at my brother to shut down the computer. About 1045pm, she took the plates and newspaper to the kitchen. Bro is still on the computer playing the games and mom nagged at him again.

Life of a housewife is just so boring, TV, COOK, WASH, NAG….

Participant Observation: Home 2

2009-09-07T10:55:00.002+08:00

In the inquisitiveness of wanting to know more about how things works with the most dominant person in my home, I decided to set my observation upon my family members. My first instance of descries in the early morning when I woke up, was to see my father waking my sister up. Just within the first reminder of my father asking her to wake up, she woke up without an intermediary and straight walked to the toilet to take her shower. This constituent factor made me wonder why she woke up so quick when my dad woke her but whenever my mother wakes her up in the morning for school, she will be like saying, “amma (mother) give me 5 more minutes” and tries to negotiate the time of waking up but it did not happen so with my father. Later after she took her shower I asked her, “Abirami, why you woke up straight away when appa (father) woke you up just now?” and she replied, “You know right that appa (father) do not like this kind of bargaining with him all so that is why I never say anything back and moreover I was so shock to hear him waking me up so I just woke up”. After awhile my sister was about to leave the house for school and she said “Bye appa”. This then triggered me a little more than the waking up because I was also about to leave for school yet she did not even say bye to me although I was long used to it but i still wanted to know why she said bye to my father only. Later that day when I came back from school I asked her, “abi how come you always say bye to appa only and never say bye to me or amma?” and she replied, “no la I don’t know why also la but it just happens that I automatically will say bye to appa”. Then I ask her why again as I did not feel very convinced with her answer, then she said, “I think its because I have lots of respect for him and also that he is the eldest”. Upon hearing that, I then made my main observation on a weekend, Saturday when everyone was at home. My mum woke up early and made breakfast for us. She made my father’s favourite dish, thosai (An Indian dish). To have completed the making of breakfast for us, she had to wake up at about 7am, which is 2 hours before my dad wakes up in the morning and then go to the market to get the stuff and come back home in time to cook despite having quite a number of steps to prepare the dish like grinding the flour, mixing it well with other ingredients and to also make the side dish to go along with it for our breakfast. It amuses me to actually see her being very keen to do us such a time consuming dish for our breakfast on a Saturday morning having to wake up early. It is because my mother has only one day off per week off and she could have actually chosen to wake up late as that is her only off/rest day. Therefore I asked her, “amma why you wake up so early to prepare breakfast?” And she replied, “At least once a week I can make your father happy by making his favourite dish for breakfast as he is working so hard for us all the time”. I was then starting to apprehend the status of my father in the grounds of my home through my mother and sister. On the same day after having breakfast, my sister and I were studying in our own rooms. My sister has this habit of blasting music while studying but whenever my dad is at home, that never seemed to happen. Once again, out of curiosity I straight when into her room and asked her “Abi, why didn‘t you blast the music today?’’ and she said, “Appa do not like blasting music and he will scold”. When I heard that statement from my sister, I learnt that she indeed knows my father very well about his likes and dislikes and caters to it in the right manner with a sense of respect for he is our father, the eldest and having a sense of that he is the superior one in our home. Later in the afternoon of the day, my whole family was watching television altogether. Then I realised that my father was the one holding the remote throughout. At a point of time we were all watching a Tamil movie on Vasantham Central channel and my father changed the channel when the advertisement came and he realised that there was a replay match of his favourite soccer team Liverpool. Thus, he just decided to continue watching the match without sparing a thought to change back the channel for us to continue watching the Tamil movie. Gradually it came to my realisation that my mother and sister were giving into him to just let him continue watching his soccer match as my mother slowly said that she was going to take a short nap. Shortly after she said that, my sister also added along in saying, “I am going back to my room to continue studying.” When I heard this, it staggered me real bad to eagerly know why they do not mind giving in so much to my father and knowing for a fact that my mother really liked that particular movie which was going on in that Vasantham Central channel and she was even longing to watch it again sometime ago. Instead, she gave in to my father to let him watch the encore telecast of the soccer match. I then went into my parents room with a desperate urge to get an answer for how and why they react as such to only my father so I asked her, “amma, are you sure that you do not want to watch the movie? and I thought you love the movie very much so why don’t you ask appa to change the channel for you to watch it?” and she replied, “You know your father loves soccer so much and he does not like it when he is asked to change the channel while he is watching his match”. Upon hearing that I went to my sister’s room asking her, “why today you were sitting down so nicely in a well mannered way” (as my sister will usually sit down on the sofa with her legs up on the table) and her reply was that, “later appa will scold for not sitting properly”. Subsequently in the evening we were all set to go out for dinner and my dad was asking all of us, “Where do you’ll think we should go for dinner” and no one replied. Then my father said, “ok let’s all go Changi village” and I looked at my mother’s face to see her reaction, she was essentially quite uncomfortable as I could see from her actions such as she was combing her hair with her hands, and as for my sister her face changed with a pinch of morose as she is afraid of the stray cats which change village is filled with. When we were in the car, travelling to Changi Village, my father was talking to us asking about our studies and school matters. I then realised that my sister was trying to converse with my dad with the right kind of words and in the most appropriate way and I know it so well that it was not her usual way of speaking like that as I have never heard her deliberating in such an appropriate manner to my mother nor me. When we came back, I asked her ,“Why you always speak so cautiously to appa?”, And she said, “ I’m afraid I may say something wrong that’s why”.

As from what I have observed thoroughly for the theme I chose to work on, it has come to such a crystal clear realisation of truth that the most respected/ dominant person at home is my father. The foremost reasons to why we respect him so much is because of the sacrifices he has made for the family by working so hard and giving us a good life. He does not load his burden upon us and instead he carries it all upon himself just to give us the best he could. Therefore everyone respects him and thus, we rather cater to his needs as much as possible. His words are final and no one objects to it. Some of the main obvious observations made were such as the single-seat sofa in the living room which is only for my father where my father sits to relax or watches television and no one will ever sit there whenever he is at home. It is like as if to say that the sofa is the throne and the ruler shall occupy the seat. Being the most respected and dominant person in the household, It is like a big position of responsibility where a higher level authority is given upon him. Therefore he has to live up to it and I feel that my father has done so much so that over the years, he had showed us that having such a pivotal role in the family is a great responsibility and not everyone can rise up to that challenge.

Participant Observation: Home 1

2009-09-07T10:52:00.002+08:00

It is always a weekly routine that my family and I gather down to watch the Sunday night movie on channel five. Today’s Blockbuster movie is War of the World.
My mum and my dad are now all sitting on the sofa. When the movie began, my mum asked me if the movie was nice. I said I do not know and but should be quite exciting. I am mot interested in this kind of thriller movie, that’s why I am no watching it now.
During the first commercial break, my dad went to sweep the floor. And he always mumbles things when he sweeps. He will tell me “See! Your dad is so nice” and like things like “You’re not guilty?” and I will say “ I also got help you every time” . he will then continue to mumble. That is really funny. He now stops by and watches the movie again and asked my mum what happened? As he always does that, my mum replied “ Watch yourself! Every time ask people and you don’t watch, tell you and you don’t get it also! I guess she felt irritated as she is now watching the movie. Actually we all felt like this because my dad always does that! He always have a lot of questions about the movie.
When he is sweeping the floor he started to complain “ See , the floor is forever so dirty. GRRR!” I totally agree with him because every time after we sweep the floor, there is always hair and dust! So it was quite irritating.
He then sit down and continue the movie and on the next advertisement he went to mop the floor. And, the complaining begins! Haha! What a cute dad I haveJ
At around 8.15pm, my brother return home from watching movie Transformer with my cousin’s family. As my mum is too lazy she asked me open the door! Haha! When my brother returned, my mum asked him a lot of questions. First “ Did the rain caught you?”, “Eaten already?” and “ Are you full”( He is a BIG eater!). He answered all and sat down on watch the movie together with her.
After my dad finished mopping the floor, he disappeared into his own room and start watching soccer. He came out like 10minutes later and asked my mum what happened. And my mum was like “ AIYOOO! Watch youself lah!” haha! This is actually mu dad’s habit, he always asks people about things he never watch, even if we explain to him, he don’t understand.
He then disappeared into the room again to take shower. So, only my brother and mum are in the living the room. They start discussing about the movie. I wasn’t too sure on what they are discussing about there were things like “ yea, they ran the right way since the water he coming from that direction” and “ they escaped to the right place”.
Now, my brother disappeared in to the kitchen looking for food. He is hungry! Haha! He is a really big eater so a normal dinner wouldn’t be enough for him. He came back we some biscuits and my mum asked him for some. My mum really likes to eat finger food stuff, that’s why we got lots of biscuits at home.
My dad came out again and randomly, my dad and mum are now discussing about Tom Cruise. I heard stuff like “He also not handsome how come so popular in Hollywood” and they continued discussing on the latest news of him.
My brother then went to take a shower and after he is done, he shouted “ Anyone want to shower, need to off heater not”. This is usually a family thing like after we shower, we will always announce if no one wants to shower, we’ll off the heater.
My dad return to his room and came out again. He wanted to use our lap top as he wanted to play game. But both me and my brother were using, so he backed out! He then went to use the old computer we had at our study room. After 2minutes, he shouted to my mum how to go in the game. This time my mum shouted back “ I taught you that time already, told you to remember how to go in you never listen! “ haha! She then tells my brother to help my dad. My dad also has this short term memory thing with electronic stuff.
It’s now 9.30pm and the movie is over, my mum was left alone at the sofa. She began to look through movies on Mio TV.
At the study room, my dad kept complaining about the computer as it auto shut down. He kept calling me and asked me to come over to solve the problem. Haha! As he shouted too much and mum gave up and asked my brother to give up his lap top for my dad to play games. My brother was watching an online animation on his computer and was vey reluctant to let it out. My father then continued to complain about the old computer in the study room. Haha! I went to help him restart the computer, 5minutes later, it auto shut down again.
So, my dad gave up, went to watch television with my mum. He then start talking and asking my mum question again. Like “ Isn’t his the guy in Ocean 13”.
My brother finished his animation online and asked my dad to use it. I bet my mum will be happy if my dad went to use the lap top as there will be no one to disturb her! haha!
As my brother walked past my dad, my dad and mum told him not to hunchback. As my brother is quite tall of his age, he was hunchback and the nickname my mum gave him was turtle. So when he wasn’t standing straight my mum will shout turtle turtle!
My brother disappeared into the room, my dad went to use his lap top and mym mum was left alone watching the movie now.

2009 Assignments

2009-02-17T22:49:00.002+08:00

This time round, the students from the third batch of this course embarked on conducting social experiments. They set out on understanding more about the behaviours, thoughts and emotions of the ever complex humans. Although new to qualitative social research, the students have performed admirably well. Good work! Hope one or two from this batch will become a real serious social scientist in future.................. : )

The Webmaster
Henry Khiat

Please take care of my laptop.

2009-02-17T22:21:00.004+08:00

Team Name: Pink Dolphin
Members: Christopher Tan Puay Liang 0822363
Teng Wei Ya 0821250
Ng Kian Long Robin 0870056
Quennie Jenn Gamboa Magalzo 0842213
Wong Yu Ping 0837042
Eugene Khoo 0863320
Tang Hui Ting 0849744
Joline Fong 0850720
Ma Yu Xuan 0841410

Abstract
We set up a laptop and a pencil box on the study table beside fc3. Our experiment is that Dolphin (our actress) will ask people to take care of her things(the laptop, pencil box & laptop bag) while she go to the toilet(somewhere else to walk). We will then ask one of our people to take an item from the things and walk off with it.

Main research question:
What will a person do or react if he/she is asked to take care of an item for a period of time by a stranger?
Sub-research question:
1) What are the social and environmental factors that influence if the person helps?
2) Why does the person help or not help?
3) Why does the person stop or not stop the person from taking?
4) What did the person do when waiting for that long?

Analysis
Sub-research question:

1) Our actress is a sweet and pleasant girl and it seems that there is no reason for rejecting her. Furthermore she is alone. The situation was that she needs to rush to the toilet and really need help from others to help her look after.

2) Most of the people were kind enough to help. They only reject when they are late for class and have no time.

3) They thought that the person taking away pencil case was her friend. They might have this kind of thinking is probably they do not believe that SP students will take away people’s belonging for no reason.

4) They read their notes, play games using PSP, chatting and messaging their friends.

Conclusion
Most of the people will lend a helping hand to others who are in need only except for those who are rushing for class. Although we told them that we are actually doing an experiment on them, most of them still smiled politely and was willing to help people who need help again.

Fainted

2009-02-17T21:57:00.004+08:00

Done by: Care Bear
– Xian Feng
– Pearly
– Mei Fen
– Zulhari
– Jasper
– Cheryl

Abstract
An experiment conducted by Care Bear on 15th January 2009. Our purpose is to study individual reaction towards a situation such as this. "When a person needs help, how would the people nearby react?"

Aim of Research
To see how people will react when they see fainted people in middle of the road.

Main Research Question
How people will react when someone fainted?

Sub Research Questions
What are the environmental/social factors that affect a person’s reaction?
How do they react when we approached them for help?
Why do they give assistance/ why don’t they give assistance?
Do their emotions seem to be affected when they know that we are carrying out an experiment on them? Give some evidences?

Data Collection Methods
- Looking for a female helper
- Looking a male adult helper

Analysis

Sub Research Question 1
When the people are rushing for class, they are alone or when there is not much passerby around, and they feel that there is a need to help.
When people approached them for help, they claim that they are helpless too.
When they are alone in helping, they feel panicked as there was no one to lead them. Hence the girl approached others.

Sub Research Question 2
They were shocked when they heard that someone fainted. They wanted to seek for ambulance and to look for other adults or male to help out. Some had no reaction at all and just walked away.

Sub Research Question 3
Why they gave assistance?
They gave assistance, probably because they feel that it is something serious as it was a guy that had fainted.
Why they do not give assistance?
They probably had not come across such situation and think that even if they were to help, they might not know how. They are also scared that they night not be of good aid and mess everything up and create more problems instead. Some might also suspect that this is prank.

Sub Research Question 4
Affected their emotions
Yes, one of them seemed to be frustrated we revealed to her that we were carrying out a social experiment which delayed her class.
Does not affect their emotions
No, it does not affect their emotions as the person still remained calm after knowing that we were carrying out a social experiment and was still willing to be interviewed.

Conclusion
In conclusion, our team feels that generally, nobody would be motivated to be involved, let alone take the initiative to help a fainted person or similar situation unless strongly/forcefully approached. The most common reaction would be “look and run”. To solve this crisis, we feel that our student should be educated to be helpful and not be ignorant.

Pick or not pick?

2009-02-17T21:29:00.004+08:00

Done by: Once upon a time
1. Jia Hui - 0736956
2. Farid - 0868680
3. Iman - 0709721
4. Thiri - 0741101
5. Farhan - 0740803
6. Fahmi - 0740816
7. Navarro Chan Hanshen - 0758457
8. Nicky pang Quan Jie - 0758684
9. Keith Ng Kah Wai - 0758697

Abstract
In this research, we aim to investigate the social perceptions, reactions and thoughts of different people. Our target audience is students of Singapore Polytechnic. We have actors dropping their money onto the floor while we waited for the reaction of the people who walked behind our actors. The whole scene is recorded by the video camera.

Aim of Research
The reaction and integrity level of people when they saw a $10 note on the floor.
Do age groups and genders play a part in affecting a person’s perspective/reaction during this situation?

Main Research Question
1. Will a person keep the money that was found on the floor without trying to look for its owner?
2. How will a person react if he is presented with an unclaimed currency note at the foyer of Food court 5?

Sub Research Questions
1. What are the environmental factors that influence the behavior of the finder of the money?
2. What are his/her thoughts when he/she is presented with the unclaimed currency note?
3. What are his actions when he or she is presented with the unclaimed currency note?
4. What are the reasons behind his/her actions?

Data Collection Methods
§ -Observational
§ -Interview
§ -Video Taking

Analysis

1. Sub research Question 1: What are the environmental factors that influence the behavior of the finder of the money?
The environmental factors include the crowd around the foyer and the location where the money was found as well as the people whom the finder was with. From scenes 1 & 3, we observed that people tend to return the money:
§ When the surrounding people is aware that he/she found the note on the floor and
§ when he/she did not have a chance to communicate with the his/her peers.
As for scene 2, we observed that when there is no one around, the finder tend to keep the money to him/herself and when his/her peers support his/her action.

2. Sub research Question 2: What are his/her thoughts when he/she is presented with the unclaimed currency note?
For subject 1, she feels that she has her own money and she does not like to take other people’s money.
As for subject 2, they claimed that they did not see the owner dropping the money hence they kept the note. However, from our observation, they saw the whole process of Nicky dropping the money. Hence, we feel that they kept the money because of greediness and dishonesty not because they did not see the owner of the note.

For subject 3, he feels that it is natural and correct to inform someone that he/she dropped their money.

3. Sub research Question 3: What are his actions when he/she is presented with the unclaimed currency note?
Out of our 3 research subjects, 2 of them thought of returning the money to the owner and 1 planned to keep the money for personal use. Subject 1 and 3 returned the money and subject 2 kept the money. Basic on our observationof these 3 subjects, 33.3% of the people will keep the money while 66.7% of the people will return the money.

4. Sub research Question 4: What are the reasons behind his/her actions?
For the 2 subjects who returned the money, their reasons were simple. They wanted to return the money to the rightful owner. They put themselves into the position of the person who lost the money. As for the subject who kept the money, he planned to use the money for personal use since the amount found was not huge. He claimed that if the amount found was more than $50, he would try to return the money to the owner.

Conclusion
There are many factors that influence the decision of the subject, on whether he/she returns the money. From our research, due to sensitive issues (i.e. background and affluence level of the finder) we can only focus on the age, gender and environment of the research.
The few factors that we could not investigate in:
§ Family background, affluence level and upbringing of the finder of the money
o We feel that it’s very rude to ask these questions as they are quite personal and sensitive.
§ Educational level of the finder of the money
o We do not know the stream of the secondary school student who returned the money.
o They poly student they come from ITE or secondary school
o Different affluence level might have different mindset toward things
§ Peer pressure?
o We didn’t have enough information of the subject and the relationship between him/her and his/her peers.
o Some people might want to return the money but because of peer pressure, they keep the money for own uses.
§ Races
§ How lecturer will react?

During our research, the 2 subjects that returned the money were a female and a young male teenage kid. The subject that kept the money was a male teenager. We observe that the gender of the actor does not matter. During the scenes for both subject 1 and 2, the money was dropped by Nicky but subject 1 returned the money.
There are also people who saw the money but did not take any action. We did a group discussion and came out with several reasons for this lack of actions by these people:
1. They feel that $10 is too little and are lazy to bother with it.
2. They didn’t process the fact that $10 was a lucky find. They were thinking about something else while they were walking toward it. Perhaps by the time they realized they should have picked it up, they already went past it or someone else had already found it.
3. They wanted to leave it for someone else less fortunate to pick it up.
Hence, we concluded that age groups, genders and environment of the situation play a part in affecting a person’s perspective and reaction during such a situation but there are many other factors which contribute to the decision too.

Can I borrow your handphone?

2009-02-17T21:09:00.005+08:00

Team Name: Team Name

Group Members Present (22.01.09):- Mallory (0821292)- Yong Quan (0821276)- Hwee Ee (0821023)- Hafiz (0820204)- Hamidah (0855594)- Wei Tian (0840310

Aim of Research

The aim of the research is to find out the thoughts and emotions of the victims when they lent their handphones to the actors. At the same time, to observe how these victims react when the actors tried to get away with the phone/do more than just to call (as stated by actors when trying to borrow handphone).

Main Research Question

How to students react to actions of the borrowers of their handphones?

Sub-Research Questions:-

Why did the victims do what they do?-

What are the victims’ emotions when the actors got away with the handphone?-

Why did the victims lend their handphones in the first place?-

Would the victims lend their handphones to strangers in the future after this incident?

Data Collection Methods

- Videos- Observational data

- Interviews

Analysis

Sub-Research Question 1- Why did the victims do what they do?Most of the victims that we approached were friendly and unsuspecting of our motives. However, they got suspicious when the actor(s) started to do more with the handphone (e.g. taking pictures with the camera phone), when in the first place, the actor(s) stated they were only borrowing it just to make a quick call. The victims then became apprehensive and in a few cases even confronted us.

Sub-Research Question 2- What are the victims’ emotions when the actors got away with the handphone?Different variations of the experiment produced different reactions. Some of the victims were anxious and scared while others were taken aback and felt that the whole set-up was weird. Undoubtedly, we also angered some of them. But what gave us away might have been our approach which might have been too random and without any concrete basis.

Sub-Research Question 3- Why did the victims lend their handphones in the first place?They felt that it was a natural thing to do. This is so because; they did not suspect the actor(s) intention to trick them. Thus, they did not mind lending their handphone to strangers.

Sub-Research Question 4- Would the victims lend their handphones to strangers in the future after this incident?Most of them said that it depends on how the person looks like. If the person looks young, presentable and does not seem to have any ulterior motives, they would most probably lend their handphones willingly.

Conclusion

As the world becomes more modernized and technology is easily available, gadgets like handphones are taken for granted. Many do not think that they are a luxury anymore. This is evident by how freely the victims lent their hanphones to the actor(s). The victims were so trustful of the actor(s) that even when the actor(s) were doing more than just making a phone call, they were hesitant to get back their handphones. And some were even amazingly ignorant about the whole situation.All in all, victims felt a sense of relief when they got their handphones back. However, they were still in a way affected and it made them changed their perception on lending their handphones to strangers.There were no environmental factors that influenced the victim’s decisions and reactions.As for social factors, the victims actually took pity on the actor(s) since they were in some sort of trouble. Hence, they willingly lent their phones to them. However, there was one that looked unwilling but he found no reason to reject the actor(s). This can be attributed to the phrase, “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”

Abnormal Booking of Tables

2009-02-17T20:47:00.004+08:00

Done By:

Abdul K Naufa

Suh Fen
0759812
Chew Shan An
0707844
Chong Teck Meng
0747318
Hong Pei Xiang
0710307
Chan Zeng Kai
0745262
Tan Shyan Huey Sabrina
0766238
Tan Khoon Yew
0729332
Chua Boon Seng
0729246

Abstract
According to the social experiment conducted, our group has gathered the following key findings:

Scenario 1: 2 tables occupied with “Official Use” sign.

1. Over 90% of the people did not take the seat due to the fact that they regard the “Official Use” sign as authentic and react by complying with the sign by searching for other seats.

2. However, due to the crowded situation during lunch hours, an approximate of 10 % of the people disregarded the sign and occupied the seat.

Scenario 2: 1 Table with “Official Use” sign, 1 Table with tissue packet

1. Similar to scenario 1, almost 80% of the people regard both the “Official Use” sign and the tissue packet as signs of the tables being occupied and continue to look for empty tables.

2. Almost 20% disregard both objects and occupied the table thereafter. However, the majority of them chose the table with the tissue packet.

From both scenarios, it can be concluded that most people complied with the objects place on tables to occupy seats. Whereas, it can also be seen from the experiment that majority of the respondents regard an official sign higher than an tissue packet.

Aim of Research
The aim of the research is to apply the concept of compliance of people in everyday life. This is conducted through a social experiment where the compliance level of individuals and groups and their stimulus to objects and environment are tested.
Main Research Question

How do people response/react, comply with the influence of authority?

Data Collection Methods

Observational Aspects:
 Actions Taken
 Body Language
 Facial Expressions
 Behavior relative to items
 Peer Influences / Pressure

Interview Questions:
When they took the seat:
- Why did you ignore the item placed on the table?
- What are your reactions and thoughts when you encountered the situation?
- If the item is replaced by “…. ”, something more prominent, would you still ignore the item and take the seat?
- How did you come to the conclusion that the item wasn’t meant to reserve the seats?
- How did you feel when you didn’t comply to the situation? Was it right or wrong?
- Was it because you were afraid to create a scene when the person returns and demands his or her seat back. If yes/no, how did you come to that conclusion that this would happen.
- Would you have done the same thing if you’re not in school and probably some where else in the public? If yes/no, why?

When they didn’t take the seat:
- Why didn’t you sit down?
- What was your first reaction when you saw the item (regarding which one was used in the experiment). If they answered that it was because the items meant that someone had ‘booked’ or ‘chopped’ the seats, than:
· How did you come to that conclusion? It might be some left behind stuffs.
· Why did you choose to comply with the items placed?

Scene of our own actors going over and removing the items:
- What are your thoughts when you saw that person removing the items, disregarding them?

Video Filming:
Please refer to clip below

Analysis

How would individuals and groups react to the situation?

The sign:
When a group of people see the sign, most of them would walk away without hesitation, however facial expressions of members among the group indicates an arousal of suspicion. In the period of our observations, 1 or 2 members from the group would walk away from the table; they kept looking at the seat, questioning why would there be a sign on the table at KFC. However for those that had no suspicion and doubt: they simply walk away and immediately look for other empty tables. (From videos on the experiment on the sign)

However, individuals react to the situation differently. This may be due to the absence of undue influence from other group members to take the seat. It can be observed that individuals were afraid of disregarding the sign or objects and would rather look for other seats available

The tissue:
From one of our videos, we can see that this time, people will question the situation. We can observe that this time, people will loiter around the seat for some time before leaving. Whereas another group of people just took the seat without questioning (From the video)

Again, the case for individuals was greatly different. In this case, the individual would actually consider in occupying the table and seating down.

Why would they comply?

Based on our actual experiments, we have come to several conclusions regarding this aspect of our research. Here are two of the reasons.

Firstly, we believe that the most prominent reason why people would comply is that they are afraid of taking responsibility. The video of the group of Malay guys sitting down after our own actors did clearly portrayed this reason. We concluded that only after someone took the lead first, would they then do likewise. Although there were no seats left and they were desperate to find a seat, they were still reluctant to be the ones to take the lead. By doing so, they were spared of having to shoulder responsibility should anything happen, which in this case, if the authorities returned and demanded a reason to why the guys had sat down at the table that was obviously reserved by the sign ‘Official Use’. And thus, only when some other people took the lead, did they then do the same. This would ensure that if the authorities wanted an answer, they could shift most of the blame to the others by saying that they did what they did.

Our second conclusion would be that people complied because they are afraid of how people would see them as. Most people are afraid to be different from the majority of the crowd, by sitting down at a table reserved by an ‘official use’ sign or by a packet of tissue. These actions are not commonly seen, thus by doing so, they are expecting people to be looking at them in a negative way, and they’re afraid of that.
Who would comply with the situation more?

People who are alone tend to comply with the situation as they do not dare to occupy the seat due to the fear of possible confrontation. However when in a group, people tend to not comply and just occupied the seat. This may be due to the fact of the powers available in a group for negotiation should there be a confrontation. However, some groups did not seat despite some members of the group wanted to as the others refuse to.

Females tend to comply with the sign more than males, which is correct according to our prediction as guys tend to be more daring, defiant than females.

Conclusion

The experiment was rather successful as it was smooth throughout with a few problems encountered throughout. Despite a few hiccups and some last minute changes, our group can conclude that the experiment was successful and it fulfilled our aims on how people react.

The Timid Test

2009-02-17T15:10:00.003+08:00

Done by

- Wenjing (P0733458)- Joycelyn (P0734194)- Sock Ching (P0745431)- Peizhen (P0719025)- Tian Xiang (P0734248)- Ibrahim (P0710480)

Abstract

From this experiment, we discovered that SP students are inquisitive about what are unknown, especially peculiar objects such as the design of our experiment bags. Factors like gender and appearances of the bags affect the reactions of the students. This experiment was conducted at food court 3 and the methods we used to collect the data are observation, interviewing and video taking.

Aim of Research

To test how timid SP students are and to analyze their thoughts when they are doing the experiment.

Main Research Question

How will students react when they put their hands into the mystery boxes?

Sub Research Questions

1. How will differences in demographics (gender, race, age etc) affect the students' reaction to the mystery boxes?2. How the actors' reactions affect the change in behaviors of the students?3. What are the reactions and thoughts of the students?4. What are the environmental factors affect the reactions and thoughts of the students?

Data Collection Methods

Observation
Interview

Video Taking

Analysis

Sub Questions:

How will differences in demographics (gender, race, age etc) affect the students' reaction to the mystery boxes?

The males are more daring, they are curious about the contents in all the bags. Hence they put their hands inside the bags without any hesitation and in all the bags. The females are more timid and would usually ask what is inside the bag before putting their hands inside.

There are no differences between any races and ages.

How the actors' reactions affect the change in behaviors of the students?

The actors were expressionless during the experiment which intensifies the atmosphere. The female participants keep prompting us to tell them the contents in the bags.

What are the reactions and thoughts of the students?

Reactions and thoughts:
· 1st participant was curious and had thought of winning a prize.
· 2nd participant was disgusted by the slimy gel and thought that she would also receive a treat just like the first participant. Thought that the content is similar to the packaging of the bag
· 3rd participant was nervous and kept asking us what was inside the bags as she thought there might be a mouse inside the bag.
· 4th participant was aghast by the scene of blood.
· 5th participant felt excited at first but was revolted by looking at his hands smudged with hair gel.
· 6th participant felt nothing and does not seemed interested in it. He took part of the experiment because of the fun.
· 7th participant felt excited before the experiment and actually felt awesome after seeing his hands full of blood.
· 8th participant felt curious and kept prompting us about the contents inside. He laughed at himself when he saw his hands were full of gel.
· 9th participant felt curious at first and felt revolted when he saw his hands full of blood
· 10th participant also felt curious at first and was appalled when he saw his hands were smudged with gel. He chose the bag because he likes the superman design outside the bag.

What are the environmental factors affect the reactions and thoughts of the students?

Due to unforeseen circumstances we are unable to conduct our experiment in different environments.

Conclusion

SP students are very cooperative and generally are quite brave and curious. The exterior of the bags does make a difference because majority of the students tend to judge the appearance of the bags before selecting a bag. This experiment was a success as we are able to gather enough information for the project.

Compliance Test

2009-02-17T14:17:00.003+08:00

Done by:
Nur Ahlina (072795)
Lee Xin Ying (0710084)
Yew Jia Jun (0737366)
Bavani J (0762854)
Chea Wei Peng (0736662)
Ng Jun Jie (0736604)
Lee Wee Lin Irene (0635307)
Mah Jia Ren Jethro(0742892)

Abstract
This experiment is carried out by placing a formal and informal "reserved" sign on one of the table during lunch peak hour at foodcourt 3.

Aim of Research
This experiment aims to test the level of compliance of people regarding to the act of reserving seats.

Main Research Question
How will people react to a "reserve" sign on the table?

Sub Research Questions
1. What are the environmental/social factors that affect if a person comply with the sign?
2.What are the reasons behind their compliance or non compliance?
3.How will demographics (gender, race, age etc) affect the level of compliance?

Data Collection Methods
Observation
Interview
Video-taking

Analysis

Subresearch Question 1
Environmental factors
When it is crowded, most of the groups will not comply to the sign.
When it is not crowded, most of the groups will comply to the sign.
Social factors
When the group is small (2 or 3 people), they tend to comply to the sign.
When there is a large group of people, they tend not to comply.

Subresearch Question 2
Compliance
They feel that the formal "reserved" sign is some reservation for staff, eg. lecturers, vendors
When people see the 'Reserved" sign, they're natural reaction is to walk away and look for other available seats without second thoughts
they think that if the seats are really reserved and they took other the seats, they are to be responsible if anything happens
they do not want to be the centre of attention
Non-compliance
the sign is not officially stamped.
they are desperate for seats

Subresearch Question 3
Girls tend to comply to the sign rather than guys. Lecturers also do comply to the sign more than students.

Conclusion
In this experiment, we found out that a lot of people tend to comply due to social factors and environmental factors. Most people are shocked and surprised to see the sign. The results, however, were not as we expected due to the difference in the timing and the size of crowd. We expected people to comply with the formal sign and ignore the informal sign, however the actual results were the opposite. We also didn't have enough time to execute the experiment sufficiently to ensure accurate results.

How human react in difficult position when they encounter problems

2009-01-30T12:48:00.006+08:00

Done by:
Rentro lui jian ting 0733010
Tan Xue Ru p0733573
Wong jin Nong p0734206
Chen weida p0764054
Bhavani P0764799
Jonathan Lee 0711689
Chua Kwan Leng p0736860
Tan Hui Xian p0736943
Venessa p0754198
Cherlyn Low p0731034

Abstract
The attitude from various stall holders are different. Using different approaches to deal with the stall holders proved to be better as we can find out the different reactions they made.

Aim of Research
To find out how stall holders treat difficult customers.

Main Research Question
How stall owner react when customer make difficult requests?
Sub Research Questions
1.How do stall owners usually treat their customers?
2.Why do stall owners treat their customer in these ways?
3.What kind of situation( long or short queue?
4.When is the busiest timing

Data Collection Methods
Through interviews. observation and videos method

Analysis
Subresearch Question 1
Customers are always kept waiting. not much communication between stall holders and customer when they are cooking. they do not smile to customers. but they treat their customers quite politely.

Subresearch Question 2
They are usually slow in cooking. There are only about 2 people managing the stall thus the efficiency of cooking and serving slow down. Because they are in the service line, they have to treat their customers better.

Subresearch Question 3
Short queue

Subresearch Question 4
Between 12 to 1 pm because it is lunch time, which is the most crowded timing.

Conclusion
Overall the experiment is a success. We managed to answer all of our sub-research questions and we achieved our purpose. We managed to find out that not all stall holders treat the customers in the same way. If we expect the stall holders to treat us nicely, do the same to them too. Most of the time they are respected.

May I have your number please?

2009-01-30T12:38:00.002+08:00

Done by: Wong Jun Kang, Woo Chuan Liang, Chia Kim Choo, Chen Minsi, Lim Hong Wei, Gerard Koh, Lim Wei Xiang, Yeo Huai Shin

Abstract:
We would be observing how people of different gender react when asked for their hand phone numbers when they are alone or in groups.

Aim of Research:
Know why people are willing/unwilling to give their numbers.
Under what circumstances do subject give their number.

Main Research Question:

How will he or she react?

Sub Research Questions:
i) What are the requests that people tend to comply with?
ii) What environmental / social factors that affected if a person comply?
iii) why does a person comply or not comply
iv) what kinds of students comply or do not comply

Data Collection Methods

Analysis

i) What are the requests that people tend to comply with?

They tend to comply with requests which they feel that they are comfortable with, in terms of the extent of the request, their involvement, safety, personal privacy and personal preference etc.

ii) What are the environmental / social factors which affects a person’s willingness to comply?

The place, the situation they are in, their status/ commitment (single, attached, married).
As compliance is due to many factors, such as upbringing and influences from friends, school and the society, the environmental and social factors which would affect a person may vary. It also depends on how we approach and the gender of the person approaching.

iii) Why does a person comply or not comply?

It could depend on their character and personality. If one’s is sociable, he/she may be more open in doing things which the more conservatives’ individuals would not. One very good example would be our experiment, investigating the cognitive, affective and behavioral part of a person.

iv) What kinds of students/ people comply or do not comply?

From our observation, both guys and girls in a group usually would less likely comply. However, when they are alone, they tend to be more open and will not hesitate to reject us. Guys tend to be complying with our requests. However, as we are only experimenting a small sample size, the observational results may vary. A larger scale experiment involving a bigger sample size would be more accurate.

Conclusion

Overall the experiment was a success. If we were to do the experiment again we will have a bigger sample size in order to have accurate data. More support and fund is needed. We regretted not recording the conversations.

To help or not to help?

2009-01-20T15:53:00.003+08:00

Done by:
Farhan 0829050, Actor 1
Fauzi 0819800, Actor 2
Tong Ngan 0830988, Observer
Hamizan 0829625, Observer
Ernest 0829597, Interviewer
Kiti 0851420, Observer
Jolynn 0844806, Actress
Hansheng 0828992, Observer
Hui Ting 0849009, Camera Woman
Hui Hui 0856272, Interviewer

Abstract
In this experiment, our goal is to investigate the social perceptions, reactions and thoughts of various people. Our targets will be the students of Singapore Polytechnic. Our actors and actress will attempt to pretend to fall along the stairway in the School of Business, near food court 6. For those that helped, and those who did not, we will approach them and let them know that we are conducting a social experiment. Following, we will interview them.

Aim of Research
To see if subject is helpful enough to stop and help the girl/guy who fell.

Main Research Question
How will students react when they see someone fall?

Sub Research Questions
- Will physical appearance affect the choice of people to help?
- How will they help the person?
- Will the conditions of the victims affect the choice of people to help?
- What are the kinds of people that are willing to help?
- What are the environment factor that affects?

Data Collection Methods
Observing, videoing and interviewing.

Analysis

1) Will physical appearance affect the choice of people to help?
Yes. The boys will normally help the girls but girls normally will be very kind and help both boys and girls.

2) How will they help the person?
1) walk forward to hold that person before he/she fall.
2) Help to pick up the belongings (e.g. boxes and bag) of the person who fell.
3) Express concern by asking if the person who fell was alright.

3) Will the conditions of the victims affect the choice of people to help?
Yes, some conditions such as the amount of things carried and severity of fall, will affect the choice of people to help. If our actor/actress is carry a lot of things, such as big boxes and bags, people will tend to offer their help. However, when our actor/actress seems to be able to help themselves, passer-bys will usually ignore them and walk away without helping.

4) What are the environment factors that affects?
The crowd. If a lot of people there, then they usually would not help as they think that other people will help the person who fell or everyone is just waiting for another person to help the fallen person.

Conclusion
Most people tend to be selective when it comes to deciding whether or not to help. Various factors such as looks, gender and races that may affect people’s decision. Some people just simply ignored the person who fell, while others walked away without lending a helping hand. It is not easy nor accurate for us to judge the helpfulness of people based solely on the data we have collected.

What exactly is it?

2009-01-20T15:50:00.001+08:00

Done by:
Names of Members and their Student Number
Serene 0862907
Fauzi 0852348
Priyah 0819897
Ke Jie 0848701
Wayne 0811716
Wee Siong 0854254
Abigail 0829638
Michelle 0828822
Daniel Chua 0829261

Abstract:
we would put a picture which displays 2 type of items or animals in it. The actors would give different or wrong opinions of the pictures. The actors would then question the subject what they think it is.The location of the experiment would be conducted in the MRT station in SP.

Aim of Research:
To find out whether people will be easily influenced by other's opinion.

Main Research Question:
How easily one can be influenced by another person in singapore polytechic?

Data Collection Methods:

Interviewing, Videoing, Observing

Analysis
a ) how does different gender react ?
first group: 2 guys 1 girlthe guys had his own opinions while the girl followed their views.
second group: 2girlsboth of them were able to see both sides of the picture. and stay solid with their own opinions.

b) why do they react in such a way ?
Some people have their own personal views and will stick by them no matter what and thus they have the confidence to give their answers without doubting what other people might think of them.Whereas,some of them chose to trust opinions of their friends or people that they know.
First group:

c) what are the reactions ?
When we approached them,the guys were willingly ready to participate in our survey.The girl however,seemed to show abit of reluctancy in participating in our survey.The guys spoke from their minds being frank and open,whereas the girl just went with the flow and agreed blindly to what the guys said.

d) how do social factors affect their choice?
They were not really affected by the social factors.An example of the social factors would be your peers and environment.The guys stood by their the desicion.The girl was uncertain,not interested and followed the guys blindly.She decided to follow her peers.

Conclusion
This experiment enhances our camaraderie.We learnt to work as a team which lead us to get to know each other better.We have also learnt that different individuals have different opinions,thoughts and beliefs.Some of them stick through their personal beliefs while others just go with the flow.Some have insecurities and doubt their own thoughts.They do not have their own opinion but instead they just follow the thoughts of those they trust.Based on the various scenerios seen,we have came up to a conclusion that we all have various different thoughts,emotions and behaviours.

Human Beings' Mind Bewilded

2009-01-20T15:47:00.001+08:00

Done by:
Clarence Yeo (0851389)
Md Aidil (0827537)
Ryan Ng (0819644)

Abstract
we would put a picture which displays 2 type of items or animals in it. The actors would give different or wrong opinions of the pictures. The actors would then question the subject what they think it is.The location of the experiment would be conducted in the MRT station in SP.

Aim of Research
To see if people's minds are easily manipulated by a group of people.

Main Research Question
The area of human interaction we are investigating on is whether the opinion of others affect people.

Sub Research Questions
How easily one can be influenced by another in singapore polytechic?
How peer pressure influence the decision?
How the mood inflence the decision?
How the interaction between the intervieweer and interviewee effects the deision made.

Data Collection Methods
Video plus observation plus interviewing.

Analysis
Subresearch Question 1
How easily one can be influenced by another in singapore polytechic?
Apparently very easy. They followed the actors answers blindly.

Subresearch Question 2
How peer pressure influence the decision?
Very much. They keep following the actors answers.

Subresearch Question 3
How the mood inflence the decision?
The interviewee was reluctant about participating thus giving answers half-heartedly.

Subresearch Question 4
How the interaction between the intervieweer and interviewee effects the deision made.
If the interviewer was more enthusiastic, the interviewee would have answered a little different.

Conclusion
People tend to follow under intense pressure.

Conforming to Notices

2009-01-20T09:17:00.008+08:00

Abstract

This social experiment seeks to find out the people’s reactions to strong warning signs. There are several conditions that affect the behaviours of the test subjects such as personalities and peer pressure. The above will be address in detail in the report herein below.

Aim of Research

The general objective of the experiment was to allow students to comprehend the concept of compliance, one of the theories behind social psychology. In the process, students may acquire the skills of conducting a proper interview and the ability to analyse the said data accordingly.

Another main objective of this social experiment were to find out different individuals’ responses to warning signs, the reasons for which the test subjects complied with the signs, as well as the conditions (e.g. environmental) affecting compliance.

Main Research Question
What are the reactions of people to warning signs using strong word

-->Complied out of fear (in fear of real danger); some obeyed the sign and didn’t enter the toilet, most of whom were girls
-->Some touched the door and went into the washroom, realising the door was not painted.
-->some of them checked the door for paint and use the warning paper to push open the door
-->some were cautious and kicked open the door

Data Collection Methods

Data were collected through the form of video recordings and interviews, after which the interviews were consolidated and evaluated.

Subresearch questions & Analysis

Subresearch Question 1
What are the environmental factors that influence people to obey signs of compliance or obedience?
-->Some of the people mentioned they were staff so they did not want to be interviewed

-->Time: There are those who were in rush for work, either ignoring the signs or did not see the signs.

-->Personality – There are 4 groups of personalities, namely “dominance, compliance, intuitive and steady”. The compliance group, being adherers, will mostly likely comply with the warning signs while the “dominance” group will mostly likely break the rules as they tend to be leaders and have their own way of thinking. The people-based personalities, “intuitive” and “steady” will probably follow the lead of those (friends) who entered the washroom.

-->Influence of friends (groups vs. individuals): As explain in the above sub-group “personality” and be influence by the one leading.

-->Gender: We have found out from observations that the female gender will tend to obey the “Do not enter” signs while the males will improvise methods of getting into the washroom whilst being cautious at the same time. Paul & Caul, 1964, reported stronger internal control for females compared to males, which attributes to more females complying than males.

Subresearch Question 2
What are the thoughts/emotions of the people when they see the signs that ask for compliance or obedience?
-->Suspicion
-->Fear (For danger signs)
-->Curiosity
-->Cannot be bothered (“rules are meant to be broken”)
-->Improvising ways to enter the toilet (used the warning paper to push the door)
-->Caution
-->Follow the lead of friends (influence of peer pressure)

Subresearch Question 3
How far will people comply or obey?
There were 2 groups of people basically; those who obey and those who did not.
1st group:
They were suspicious initially, after which the started to be more cautious. Thereafter, they tested the warning sign/s, and went into the toilet.
2nd GroupThere were those who complied fully, most of whom were girls and did not enter the washroom.

Analysing the above data, we are of the opinion that most people comply with strong warning signs, be it completely or to a limited extent.The sign, “DANGER”, implies a risk factor and one will be more cautious upon seeing such as sign. Not complying at all would mean entering the washroom whilst ignoring the warning signs totally. However, in most cases, the test subjects either complied fully or did not enter the washroom immediately after detecting the sign. This concludes that individuals comply with the signs to a limited extent, considering the warning signs slowed down their movements into the washroom, without taking into account whether the test subjects entered the washroom ultimately.

Subresearch Question 4
d) What are the thoughts and emotions of the people after they have realised the truth, after which how will they behave?
Most would laugh off their stupidity and will be “more smart” in the future.
There were some of them who seemed to be angry but did not express their anger towards us (issue of mannerism).
After that they knew that the experiment was a prank, they said they would not trust these signs anymore or be more cautious in the future.

Conclusion:We have come to a conclusion that most people will comply with strong warning signs as it is their most basic instincts to react to the signs out of fear. As a result, they will either comply with the signs fully or be more cautious when proceeding, when the test subjects found out that the signs were “fake”, there proceeded ahead without fear or improvise methods of entering the washroom such as using the warning paper to push open the door.

HONESTY VS. TEMPTATION

2009-01-13T15:52:00.005+08:00

Title: HONESTY VS. TEMPTATION

Done by: Juliana - 0809449Eileen Goh - 0826242Xu Jing - 0853505Ching Hui Kheng - 0865447Georgina Tan Xuan En - 0835925Wang Zihan - 0853493Natalie Tan Jia Hui - 0835839Lu Jiamin Ivy - 0809931Tan Guan Kai - 0825238

Aim of Research
The aim of this study is to investigate the variation between honesty and temptation.Main

Research Question
How will a person react when a fellow peer drop his/her wallet?

Scenarios may include the person walking and talking at the same time and dropping her wallet without her realising.

Sub Research Questions(1)

What are the environmental factors that cause the person to pick up/ not pick up the wallet?

(2) What will a person do if he or she picks up the wallet?

(3) What are the situations that the person pick up/not pick up the waller?

(4) How will the people around the subject react?

(5) What are the kinds of people who help or do not help?

Data Collection Methods
Our social experiment was conducted on the 6th January 2009 from 0830 to 0910. It was conducted at 2 places which are FoodCourt 4 and MRT Station respectively.

The forms of data collection for the research are as below:
(a) Respective roles are given to each group members ; such as 3 actors, 2 cameramen, 2 interviewer and 2 observer.
(b) Every person whom we manage to caught hold of were asked the same set of interview questions.
(c) Two of our members have given their observation during the exercise.

Analysis

Subresearch Question 1
(1) What are the environmental factors that cause the person to pick up/ not pick up the wallet?Whether the place is crowded or non-crowded, it does not affect whether the person picks up or does not pick up the wallet. It depends on whether did the person see or notice the wallet.

Subresearch Question 2
(2) What will a person do if he or she picks up the wallet?
They will return the wallet to the rightful owner.

Subresearch Question 3
(3) What are the situations that the person pick up/not pick up the waller?
The person will pick up the wallet depending on whether he/she saw or notice the wallet.

Subresearch Question 4
(4) How will the people around the subject react?
Most people around the subject did not pick up the wallet if they are a distance away from the suject. Most people see us in a weird manner as they know what we are doing. Some may even just walk away.

Subresearch Question 5
(5) What are the kinds of people who help or do not help?
There is no particular variation. Majority of those who see it will pick up.

Conclusion
We conclude that student in SP are helpful and they will return to the rightful owner when they see a wallet dropped from a stranger.

Conformity - Elevator

2009-01-13T15:30:00.004+08:00

Title: Social Experiment - Conformity - Elevator

Done by: Pamela, Dayana, Ee Chun, Yi Di, Li Zhen, Jing Ting, Maira, Hui Li, Wee Hao

Main Research Question
- Would a person still takes a lift despite a sign stating “out of order”?

Sub Research Questions
- what are the environmental / social factors that affect if a person comply?
- how do the people involved react upon seeing the “sign”?
- why do the people comply / didn’t comply?
- how far would a person investigate whether the lift is really out of order?

Data Collection Methods
- observe- video- interview

Analysis

Subresearch Question 1
[what are the environmental / social factors that affect if a person comply?]
- large groups of people may tend to comply to the sign once one of them sees the sign and walks away.
- passing of message from one person to another regarding the lift breakdown.

Subresearch Question 2
[how do the people involved react upon seeing the “sign”?]
- Most of the people turn away and walk off without even trying to check if the lift is really out of order.

Subresearch Question 3
[why do the people comply / didn’t comply?]
- They didnt doubt the credibility of the sign, they thought the sign was put up by the management.
- they didnt bother much as the stairs is right beside the lift.

Subresearch Question 4
[how far would a person investigate whether the lift is really out of order?]
- From our experiment, all the people did not investigate.

Conclusion
People are easly led away by the sign without investigating its credibility.

Requesting People to perform in front of camera

2009-01-13T14:38:00.005+08:00

Team Name: Split Ends
Done by:
Nur Liyana Binte Shafie DAC/FT
Malcom Goh Aik Liang DEEE/FT
Jayne Ang DCP/FT
Ong Li Ting DCP/FT
Ang Ying Lan DCP/FT
K Saraswathi DFST/FT
Ng Hui Min DFST/FT

Absent:
Lee Wen Jun DCHE/FT

Location: Foodcourt 2 and T1A
Time: 0845 to 0930

1. Abstract

Scenario:
In this experiment, we aim to investigate the social perceptions, reactions and thoughts on different people. Our target audience is students at Singapore Polytechnic. We will be acting as students from the school of media and communications, doing a project on funny actions. We will approach random students in SP and tell them about this project that we are doing and ask if they are willing to help us by showing us some funny actions and allowing us to video them down.

2. Aim of Research

The main aim of this experiment is to see how different students will react when we approach them to ask for help on this funny actions project and to investigate on what type of students will help and what type of students will not help.

3. Main Research Question

How a person will react when being approached?
There will be 4 kinds of people. Firstly, some students will just totally ignore us and walk away without saying anything. Secondly, some students will stop to listen to us and then give excuses to reject us even after much persuasion. Thirdly, some students will stop to listen to us and show some interest in helping but in the end still reject us. The last type of students are students who will stop to listen to us, show us interest in helping and help us willingly without showing discontentment.

4. Sub Research Questions

1) What made some of them to be willing or unwilling to help?
2) What are the factors (environment, people around/with subject, timing, etc) that contribute to the decision made?

5. Data Collection Methods

Interview, observation and video

6. Analysis (Describe how your data answer your 2 sub research questions)

6.1 Sub Research Question 1
What made some of them to be willing or unwilling to help?

They may be uncomfortable with doing the stupid actions and not in the mood, some felt that fellow students should help each other as if the person being approached put himself in the actors’ shoes, they would hope that people would help them too. Some of them are just afraid to make a fool of themselves. Lastly, some people are born introverts and are shy in nature, thus they do not have the courage to do funny actions for us even though they would very much want to help us.

6.2 Sub Research Question 2
What are the factors (environment, people around/with subject, timing, etc) that contribute to the decision made?

Firstly, it may be due to their own personality, whereby some may like to do such things and some may not like to do such things and find it uncomfortable. The timing at which the students are approached is also an area for concern, whereby some may be rushing for lessons at that point of time and may not have the time to spare us even though they are of interest to help us. Thirdly, the attitude of the people who are asking for help matters, as we are asking a favour from others. Thus, a friendly attitude towards the people we are asking for help from would enable them to feel more comfortable in helping us and would make us feel more approachable and more would be willing to help us. The situation in which the person being approached also matters. Some of them are in a group, thus they do not feel awkward. Though they felt weird doing weird and funny actions in the middle of nowhere, it was fun to be done with a group of friends.

7. Conclusion

It was rather difficult to choose subjects, although it was said to be chosen by random, and of different races and gender. Some ignored us when we approached them, and the “ambush” was a little difficult since we needed to be around to see the whole process and yet far apart to pretend to not be associated with one another.

Helping Behaviour

2009-01-13T13:53:00.003+08:00

Title: Our Social Experiment
Done by: kaching!
Tan Sinee/ 0810616
Noraniza Bte Md Isa/ 0867308
Sandra Koh/ 0867296
Ho Jinyi/ 0867311
Yee Peixiu/ 0848107
Sebastian Tan/ 0824039
Wong Chee Wai/ 0816287
Teo Jiayi/ 0810702

Aim of Research
Understand the students in SP in means of the individual character for their helpfulness and honesty.

Main Research Question
How helpful/honest are people in Singapore Polytechnic?

Sub Research Questions
How does the type of gender affect the level of helpfulness?
- What are the types of helping inducement scenario that affect a person's level of honesty?
- What are the internal factors of a person that will determine if he or she helps?
- How helpful are the students from the individual schools in Singapore Polytechnic?

Data Collection Methods
We collected the data by doing observation, videoing the whole process and by interviewing some of the people.

Analysis

Subresearch Question
1) How does the type of gender affect the level of helpfulness?
From the experiment that we have done, males did not help at all wheras females are the more helpful ones. The gender of person dropping the coins does affect the helpfulness level of people. SP male students are observed by us that they are not the helpful type of people.

Subresearch Question
2) What are the types of helping inducement scenario that affect a person’s level of honesty?
For the scenario with someone banging, that person did bother to help. However, for scenario where we hold the money and drop it, people usually did not help probably because our acting skills were not natural enough and they realize that we were filming them or they do not bother to help at all. In all, everyone was honest enough at least not to steal any of the money and run away.

Subresearch Question
3) What are the internal factors of a person that will determine he or she helps?
From what we observed, those that do not seem to bother help while those that seem to bother did not help. Since it was morning and students are still half awake and thus did not bother about their surrounding.

Subresearch Question
4) How helpful are the individual schools in Singapore Polytechnic?
The helpfulness from the students of the individual schools is equally helpful. In addition, we think they are more of honest than helpful.

Words from the Webmaster

2008-08-22T14:01:00.007+08:00

Dear readers,

Greetings! This marks the completion of the second instalment of the wonderful social psychological projects done by students of module MS006A in Singapore Polytechnic. As usual, there are a number of projects that focus on improving academic and social environments here. They are yet again illuminating barring the presence of hindsight bias from the readers.

This instalment has also come with some controversial research topics. I respect these students who are willing to investigate on such divisive areas. It is never easy to do a research on areas such as deviant behaviours because its stakeholders are usually not easy to approach and are generally not forthcoming in their responses. However, these young researchers persevered and succeeded. As ethical researchers, they have also ensured the identities of their interviewees are protected.

These controversial areas should not be ignored just because they touch on sensitive areas. Instead, they should be eagerly pursued in the spirit of creating awareness of such phenonmena. Social changes need such brave souls to initiate and effect.

Lastly, for the advancement of humankind, let us know hope more investigation into the thoughts, emotions and behaviours of humans can be supported and celebrated.

Watch out the next instalment early 2009! Cheers!

Henry Khiat

A EXPLORATORY STUDY OF WHY STUDENTS BREAK THE SINGAPORE POLYTECHNIC SCHOOL RULES

2008-08-22T13:56:00.003+08:00

A EXPLORATORY STUDY OF WHY STUDENTS BREAK THE SINGAPORE POLYTECHNIC SCHOOL RULES.

DONE BY: (AN admirable solo effort of a researcher who dares to ask controversial questions)

Aim Of Study

The study, titled “why students break the Singapore Polytechnic school rules?” is carried out with the intent of getting a more in depth understanding of why the students break the school rules and how can we go about preventing a repetition of this in the future.

Ultimately, we hope to give a detailed analysis so as to let this issue be resolved more easily, resulting in certain guidelines and regulations that Singapore Polytechnic can adopt to prevent such conduct from taking place in the future.

The main research question is divided into 3 sub questions:
a. Why do the students think breaking of school rules is okay?
b. Why have the school been not able to stop this from happening repeatedly?
c. What causes the students to break the school rules?

Data Collection And Analysis Methods

The research was conducted in Singapore polytechnic. The research took a total of three weeks to complete. The research spans from 12th July 2008 to 26 July 2008.

The method used for this study is as follow:
· Selected interviewing of 4 students who were seen breaking school rules and willingly accepted our invitation. A sample of an interview can be seen in Appendix A.

The forms of analysis used are as follow:
a) Open Coding. Examples of open coding of an interview are shown in Appendix A to Appendix C respectively.
b) Noting habits, patterns
c) Noting relations between variables
d) Clustering

Findings

The findings for this research are as follows:

8.1 Factors involved when students break the Singapore Polytechnic school rules
The main factors as to why the students break the school rules can be summarized into 3 main categories, the type of students, type of lecturers, and the environmental situation. This answers the first 2 questions.

8.1.1 Type of Students

The students tend to be attached in groups or with their girl or boyfriends. Therefore, they are easily influenced into doing things they do not want, for example, breaking the school rules. Therefore, this plays a very a big part in whether students will break the school rules. As we can see in the interviews, many students do not think that breaking the rules is wrong because of the fact that their friends are breaking them too. Next, the students themselves ave very little will power. They are wavered too easily and thus influenced too easily. Thus, this can be a major hurdle in tyring to stop the school rules from being broken.

8.1.2 Type of Lecturers

The lecturers, on the other hand, are sort of the higher authority to the students. However, from the interviews, we can see that they have not really made an effort to actually stop the rules from being broken. This causes the students to think that breaking the school rules is okay because the lecturers are not catching them. Therefore, lecturers have to start exerting their authority on this matter if they want to get this to stop. Next, in one of the interviews, one of the subjects even mentioned they have actually witnessed one of the lecturers breaking the rules themselves. This has got to stop before the situation can be solved. Therefore, for the current situation to stop, we need the lecturers to take a firm stand.

8.1.3 Environmental situation

Students are affected by the environment too. For example, from what they see, they might think that it is acceptable. Thus, the correct environment where the students are placed in will be important. At the same time, parents are also part of the students’ environment. So at the same time, the parents have to be good role models and have to set the perfect example for their children

8.2 Attributes for students who break the school rules
From our interviews, we can see a few of the attributes or characteristics that these students possess or is affected by. This answers the third question.

8.2.1 Theory of planned behaviour
Some of the subjects actually showed their unwillingness to break the school rules at first but later on submitted to the situation. This can be attributed to the theory of planned behaviour as they made themselves think that it is actually okay to break them. Therefore, this is one of the main behaviours that the subjects showed to let them relieve themselves of their guilt when breaking rules.

8.2.2 Social norm
The students who broke school rules think that it is okay also due to the fact that everyone is doing it now. This is the effect of social norm. When someone sees that someone else is also doing it, then it should be okay. This is probably the most dominant cause of students willing to break the school rules. However, this is not something that can be easily solved. Many times, this is the hardest part to erase as it is happening so rampantly and there is really little that one can do to stop it.

8.2.3 Stereotyping
Many times, students will possess a set of believes which results in rigid and overgeneralised images of members of that group. This causes them to have a mindset that the groups that possess rule breakers are okay. Once they stereotype these groups, they will have the same mindset as them, thinking that breaking rules is okay and that they should break rules. This causes them to have the same attitude as the rule breakers and end up like them, breaking school rules.

8.3 Reasons why students break school rules
8.3.1 Oblivious to it
Most students do not even know of the existence of the school rules.

8.3.2 Self-convenience
Most students break school rules due to the fact that it makes their life easier and that some procedures which consume time can be skipped. E.g. Logging into the school computers without booking.

8.3.3 Lack of Punishment
Many students continue to break the school rules as there is no punishment imposed on them.

8.3.4 Social Norm
Many students continue to break the school rules even though they know that it is wrong as everyone else is also doing it.

8. Conclusion

In order to provide a fruitful and effective research, I must understand the whole problem thoroughly. This is also the case for rule breaking in Singapore Polytechnic. From this study, I have developed a few factors, attributes and reasons to explain why the rules have been repeatedly broken. With the knowledge of such factors, attributes and reasons, teachers, counselors and researchers will be able to deal with this situation more effectively and maybe even develop a more advanced why of dealing with the current situation. Furthermore, this can be a platform for other researchers to have further development or expansion. Nevertheless, if the teachers, counsellors and researchers cannot see the significance of mathematics anxiety and refuse to act on it, this study will remain a research article that serves the sole purpose of pleasure reading.

An exploratory study of the types of inconsiderate behaviour exhibited by students in the food courts in Singapore Polytechnic.

2008-08-22T13:52:00.001+08:00

Title : An exploratory study of the types of inconsiderate behaviour exhibited by students in the food courts in Singapore Polytechnic.

Date : July 2008, AY 2008/09, Semester1

Conducted by :
Goh I-Vy 0656670
Vanessa Chan Sing Nee 0635899
Ong Aaron 0635365
Izdiyad Syamin Bin Rosli 0740308
Muhd Firdaus Bin Sahrol 0739342
Low Young Boon 0764434
Siti Mahirah Bte Malek 0642116
Huang Pengyu 0753791

AIM OF STUDY
The aim of this study is to answer the main research question as below:
What are the types of inconsiderate behaviours encountered in food courts during peak hours from 11am to 2pm?

This main research question is fragmented into the following sub questions:
a) What are the types of behaviour in food courts?
b) Why is the behaviour perceived as inconsiderate?
c) Why do the students perform such inconsiderate behaviours?
d) What do the students think of such inconsiderate behaviours?

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS METHODS

This study employs a qualitative social-psychological research paradigm. The research is conducted in all food courts in Singapore Polytechnic. The research takes a total of five weeks to complete. The research stretched from July 2008 to August 2008.

The forms of data collection for the research are as below:
a) Observation of the behaviour of students in six different food courts, taking a total of 8 observation sessions of around 30 minutes each. An example of an observation in this study is shown in Appendix A.
b) Selected informal open-ended interviews of two students in food courts 1, 4, 5 and 6, and four students in food court 2 and 3. An example of an interview in this study is shown in Appendix B.

The forms of analysis used are as follow:
a) Open Coding. Examples of open coding of an observation and interview are shown in Appendix C and Appendix D respectively.
b) Noting relations between variables
c) Partitioning variables
d) Notting themes, pattern

FINDINGS (use diagrams or tables to supplement your report when needed)
The findings for this research are as follows:

a) The different types of behaviour or actions that students in Singapore Polytechnic consider as inconsiderate. This answers the first sub research question for this study.

Table-hogging
Based on the answers given, table-hogging appears to be the most common inconsiderate behaviour displayed by the students across all six foodcourts. There are several ways groups of students hog the table.

For example, the most common observation was that most students tend to put their bag on the extra seats. This prevents other students from occupying the extra seats. Students also hog the table by remaining in the seats even after finishing their meals and chat, play games, surf the internet, completing assignments and other activities with no relation to eating. The main purpose is to pass or ‘kill’ time.

Table-hogging also causes a disruption to the traffic flow of students in the food courts. Students who are waiting for available seats will block the pathway in the food courts. Some key factors to take note of include the narrow pathways in between the tables and the substantial amount of space is taken up by cleaners pushing carts to clear the tables. This causes the food courts to be crowded and affects the efficiency of the cleaners.

Jumping Queue/ Long Queue
Students were observed allowing their friends to cut into the queue. There are also students who help their friends to purchase food during peak hours. This results in slow and long queue, and is also a form of cutting queue as it is unfair for the other students that are waiting in line. The other students in the queue are hence unable to estimate the time they would take to buy their food. In addition to that, the long queues also cause a disruption along the food court pathways.

Tables Cleanliness
We observe that most students do not clear their tables after meals. On top of that, they also dirty the tables and leave their litter around. As a result, other students tend to refuse to occupy the tables when they are vacant, but would rather wait for a cleaner one.

In this scenario, two groups of students can be observed. The first group consist of the students who fail to clear their plates after their meals. The second group are the students who refuse to occupy the vacant tables unless they have been cleared by the cleaners. Both groups are not willing to undertake the responsibility and are not willing to take the initiative to keep the food court clean but rely on others to clear it up for them.

b) The main reason on why such behaviour occurs in the food courts in Singapore Polytechnic. This answers the second and third sub research question for this study.

Convenience
Students choose to stay in the food courts after meals, because it is the most convenient place. Based on the answers given, most students feel that the food court is the nearest place to hang out at while waiting for lessons to start. They can pass their time by doing whatever they want such as reading, chatting, playing PSP, surfing the internet, etc. Some feel that the idea of having to find another suitable location is troublesome and are reluctant to move to another location.

c) The reactions of the students towards the inconsiderate behaviour shown by their peers in the food courts in Singapore Polytechnic. This answers the fourth sub research question for this study.

Based on the interview answers, we realise that the students feel most strongly about the table-hogging issue. We also noted that most students choose to ignore the inconsiderate behaviour when they encounter them. They would only stare at the other students and walk away, even if they felt frustrated, annoyed or angry.

DISCUSSION
After researching, we realise that the main inconsiderate behaviour of students in food courts is the table-hogging issue. Therefore, we shall focus on table-hogging in our discussion.

Our definition of table-hogging is the occupying of seats for an unnecessarily long period of time and using the tables for reasons other than eating. Firstly, we realise that most students hog the tables in groups. They are usually observed to be chatting with each other or waiting for each other to finish their meal. This demonstrates group behaviour, as the action of an individual is influenced by the member.

For example, if most of the members in the group are chatting after the meal, it is unlikely that any member of the group would solitarily leave their seat. Even if any of the members feels considerate enough to leave the place, he or she would not dare to raise his or her opinion but would rather go along with the majority. This is an issue of conformity, where there is a distortion in perception and might be also due to the fear of being socially ostracised.

The groups of students waiting for the vacant seats could also be demonstrating an issue of diffusion of responsibility. No action is taken, even if they felt frustrated or annoyed with the group of students hogging the table. None of the groups belonging to this category approached the group to ask them to leave. This can be said as a diffusion of responsibility as every member of the group relied on the other members to take the initiative. This leads to the decision to wait for other tables to be vacant.

CONCLUSION
In order to provide the most effective solution to a problem, there is a need to understand the problem thoroughly. This applies for the case of the inconsiderate behaviour exhibits by teenagers in food courts in Singapore.

From this study, we have identified three main behaviours perceived as inconsiderate exhibited in food courts: hogging of tables, jumping or cutting of queues and failing to clear the tables after meals. After analyzing the answers given in the interview and observations, we are able to identify several concepts that form the reasons behind such inconsiderate behaviour.

The main reason that such behaviour exists is due to group behaviours. Issues such as conformity and the fear of being socially ostracised are some of the main contributors to the problem. Diffusion of responsibility is also prominent among the groups.

Being aware of the reasons of such behaviour entitles some form of further action to be taken, such as campaigns related to the issue to be organised by the school in order to create awareness among the students. By creating awareness, every individual member of the group would realise that he or she plays a crucial role in maintaining the good etiquette in food courts. If no actions are taken to address and solve this issue, the general level of courtesy of Singapore may be affected if such inconsiderate behaviours were to be repeated outside of Singapore Polytechnic.

Why are there long queues at Foodcourts?

2008-08-22T13:48:00.002+08:00

Title
Why are there long queues at Foodcourts?

Date
15th July 2008, Semester 1

Done By:
CHONG SUAN TING 0620321
NUR HAZWANI BINTE ISMAIL 0615332
NURAIN BINTI BORHAN 0622208
SIM KIAN TAT 0625681
TAN XIANG YING 0635659
MUHD SYAFIQ ABDUL GHANI 0640354
WONG LENG FEI GARY 0727314

ALVIN LOW CHONG BOON 0539906

AIM OF STUDY
The aim of this study is to answer the main research question as below:
To find out the factors that causes long queues in all foodcourts in Singapore Polytechnic.

This main research question is fragmented into the following sub questions:
a) Which foodcourt do you visit most frequently? Why?
b) What other activities do you do besides having your meal?
c) What is the average time taken from queuing to getting seated?
d) How has it affect students / consumers?
e) How can we overcome this problem?

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS METHODS

This study employs a qualitative social-psychological research paradigm. The research is conducted in all foodcourts (FC 1 – FC6) in Singapore Polytechnic. The research takes a total of six weeks to complete. The research stretches from 9th July 2008 to 23rd July 2008.

The forms of data collection for the research are as below:
a) Each group member is in charge of 2 food courts. Detail research and analysis done individually. There is a repeat of information gathered from the same foodcourt to obtain optimum results.
b) Every team member uses the same set of interview question. An example of an interview in this study is shown in Appendix A.
c) Each member to have personal observation to contribute to the data analysis by the interviewees. An example of a set of observations is shown in Appendix B.

The forms of analysis used are as follow:
a) Open Coding. Examples of open coding of an observation and interview are shown in Appendix C and Appendix D respectively.
b) Finding common themes
c) Categorising

FINDINGS (use diagrams or tables to supplement your report when needed)
The findings for this research are as follows:

a) The conditions and the causes long queues in foodcourts are as follows:
i) Environment
In this study, it is shown the environment of food court is a factor that determines where the students go for lunch. For instance, some interviewees commented that they like going to Foodcourt 2 because it is renovated. As such, the space becomes well-ventilated and bigger, thus, students will tend to go in big groups and spend longer time there. Similarly, in Foodcourt 4, it is air-conditioned and the dining space is configured into 3 sections. Therefore, these appealing factors the respective food courts offer brings about comfort thus able to attract students.

ii) Location
Location is one determining factor when students decide where to go. Most of the time they would go somewhere which is near to their classes because it is much more convenient, time and energy saving (avoid the hot weather). However, some students don’t mind travelling further to satisfy their cravings, thus there is no fixed number of students in every foodcourt during lunchtime.

iii) Variety & Quality of Food
Students are able to choose from a wide range of food is available in the food courts in Singapore Polytechnic. There’s fast food (Macdonald’s in FC 2, Pizza Hut & KFC in FC 5), Thai Cuisine (FC 4), Vegetarian Food (FC 1 & FC 6). Fast food is the all-time favourite of youngsters; therefore the lengthy queue lines formed is inevitable.
Besides fast food, students also go for food quality. An example is the economical mix rice stall in FC 2, where most would agree that the food is delicious yet cheap.

iv) Peer Influence
Peer plays an important role in decision making because most people prefers going for meals with their friends/ colleagues by nature. Therefore, consumers are expected to come in groups.

v) Inconsiderate Behaviours

The inconsiderate behaviours that contribute to the problems the team observed are mainly table-hogging and buying multiple shares. Some students tend to stay on chit chatting, using their laptops and playing card games after the meals, depriving others of the seat, thus leading to circulation problems as the block the passage way while roaming around for available seats.
Another major issue is when one student orders multiple sets of meal for their friends. This causes the people at the back of the queue to be greatly affected as they have to wait longer for their turn to come. This explains why some people have to spend half of their lunch break queuing up.

vi) Speed of Food Preparation

Time taken for the stall workers to prepare food also affects the long queues greatly. When the workers take a longer time to prepare, the queue will only accumulate than getting shortened and the waiting time per person increases. The team noticed that the stalls that take a longer time to get ready the food are usually run by elderly. Examples of slow food preparation are the Muslim Food in Food court 6, Fishball Soup in Foodcourt 2 and Muslim Stall in Foodcourt 3.

DISCUSSION

-Environment

Environment is an important factor that will influence students on whether will they patronise that particular food court often or once in a blue moon. Students normally will patronise food court with better ambience and environment, so that they will be able relax and relieve from stress while enjoying their meal. Sub-factors that contribute to the environment of a food court are the type of crowd, ambience, sceneries and whether is the food court air-conditioned. We can relate these entire factors to the food court in our campus, for example; Food court 4 being well air-conditioned and the only air-conditioned food court in our campus, which result in the overwhelming crowd. Whereas food court 3 has a panoramic view of the field and a lovely fountain by the entrance of the food court, thus attracting a substantial amount of students to patronise. In food court 6, the type of crowd in it is the sole factor that attracts student to patronise, as it is renowned for its high population of female students. Whereby, attracting most of the male students from all other schools to patronise in food court 6, despite it is located at the far end of the campus.

- Location
For location, attitude is one of the social psychological points that affect the thought of students. Most students are merely self-centred. They prefer going to the nearest foodcourt regardless of the price and variety of the food just to save time and energy which is to avoid the hot weather as well as for self-convenience which is to avoid the hot weather. Only a minority who are broadminded would not mind travelling to other further foodcourt to try other different variety of food as well as experience the environment of other foodcourts since some foodcourts are well-ventilated or air-conditioned.

- Peer Influence
Peer influence is a huge factor in letting students to decide their choice of foodcourts as well as the food they are having. The social psychological viewpoints that can be used to change the thought of students include persuasion, conformity and consensus seeking.

Students of Singapore Polytechnic usually hang around in cliques and members in the group are usually very concerned with consensus seeking. The members will be very concerned with gaining unanimous agreement rather than quality of group decision, which in this case, means that when an individual decide to have lunch at a certain foodcourt, the rest will agree and go together.

In addition to consensus seeking, students also use persuasion to change their friends’ thoughts on which foodcourt to go and what to have. They may apply rational or emotional arguments to convince their friends to adopt their personal position. The friends will be facing pressure from the one persuading them and will thus conform and agree to go to the foodcourt as requested by the one. They will modify their behavior in response to pressure from others, either imagined or real, and actually no in response to a direct request.

- Food Quality
Does the presence of fast-food affect the choices made by the students in deciding on which foodcourt to go? Some foodcourts offer special food such as Thai cuisine, Macdonald’s, Pizza hut, Waffleton and vegetarian food. These stalls are not common in Singapore Polytechnic, so students may be attracted to visit the foodcourts that has these stalls when they have special cravings to eat these foods.

Some food offered in different foodcourts may taste better, which are also main attractions for students to visit. Chicken talk, the chicken rice stall at foodcourt 3, is very popular with students as the quality of food is good and the price is acceptable. There are chicken rice stalls in almost all Singapore Polytechnic foodcourts but students tend to visit the stall that offers the ‘same’ food but of higher quality.
- Popularity of Foodcourt

What attracted students to visit the food courts in SP?
According to observations data, food court 4 will be a much popular food court in SP. Reasons being that is air-conditioned and there are good and cheap foods. However, there are students whereby prefer to go a certain food court which is near to their school. Reasons such as lazy to walk, time consuming to travel and etc.
A breakdown of 6 Food Courts in SP by their popularity.

Food Court 1:

Being the nearest food court to the School of Built Environment, most common students from School of Built Environment will visit this food court during their 1 hour lunch break. School of Chemical Life Science and Singapore Maritime Academy students will visit too, due to the popularity of the stalls. Stalls such western foods which can wait up to 35 minutes, Japanese food and Yong dau fu stalls can wait up to 20 minutes.

Food Court 2:

Having one of the popular fast food restaurants can really attract a lot of students especially during breakfast. Ways that attract students also because it is cheaper compare to public. Not forgetting some cheap and nice foods along the way. Recommended by Singapore Maritime Academy students where they will normally have their lunch. Chicken rice, mixed vegetable rice and the Muslims stalls are the one which always got long and messy queues.

Food Court 3:

Having one food court which is almost the centre of the whole campus, it attracts students from all schools to drop by. Chicken talk stalls where they sell Muslims chicken culet rice and noodles costing $2 each. Queues for this stall can queue up to 20 minutes just to wait for the food. Ban Mian which is also popular especially to ladies who want to eat small and filling food. The queue can wait up to 10 – 15 minutes.

Food Court 4:

Air-conditioned food courts which have no different compare to the public food court attract not only students but non SP students too. Food court operated by “Kou Fu” is a popular food court out in the public too. Crowds never seem to subside when they start their daily operation till 3-4 O’clock. Muslims stall are one of the best selling food in the food court. Long queue can be spotted especially during lunch break. Waiting time can queue up to 20 minutes. Thai Cuisine which has been awarded one of the best foods in SP also receives long queues during lunch break. Foods in food court 4 have more variety compare to the other food courts.

Food Court 5:

Another 2 popular fast food restaurants which located at food court 5 attracts nearby secondary school students from New Town Secondary School. Waiting time just for getting a meal can wait up to 25 – 30 minutes. Queues are spotted to have multiply columns at the KFC counters. Pizza huts are always full house. What attracts students is the price. It is at least 50 – 90 cents cheaper compare to public.

Food Court 6:

Last food court located at the School of Business is one of the cheapest food courts in SP. Crowds start flowing in when it is close to lunch break. Long queues can be spotted at Muslims food and chicken rice stalls. This two are the much more popular foods not only in food court 6 but as well as in the whole SP. Nice and cheap food. As usual, crowds are mostly students from School of Business. This food court is one of the food courts with vegetarian’s food and this will attracts vegetarians from different school to travel here to buy.

- Inconsiderate Behaviours
Those whom are queuing up may show inconsiderate behaviours by buying food for their friends. This may create anger and unhappiness to those at the back of the queue as it was unfair to them. Others will be affected by their inconsiderate actions, even stall owners will be affected for they have to prepare a big number of meals at one time. They may be under pressure too due to this.
In other cases, a friend would allow a few other friends to queue in front of them instead of going to the back of the queue. This may be due to persuasion by their peers however ignoring those behind who has been queuing for some time.
All these inconsiderate behaviours have been a factor for causing long queues during peak hours.

CONCLUSION
In order to provide the most significant solution to the problem of long queues in foodcourts, we need to understand the factors that contributed to this problem.
We have separated the factors into different categories of location, peer influence, food quality, popularity of foodcourts, and inconsiderate behaviours. From the viewpoint of social psychology, there are usage of persuasion, conformity and consensus seeking in deciding the foodcourt to visit.
After determining the types of categories and the social psychological viewpoints, we can better understand the problem and be able to provide a more in depth analysis as well as suggest more relevant solutions. Researchers can use it as a platform to study the other aspects of the factors leading to long queues and their impact on others.

Title: An exploratory study of the behaviours of Singapore polytechnic students breaking school rules intentionally.

2008-08-22T13:42:00.002+08:00

Title: An exploratory study of the behaviours of Singapore polytechnic students breaking school rules intentionally.

Conducted by: (Webmaster: Another wonderful group of trailblazing researchers at work. Their identities are protected.)

AIM OF STUDY
The aim of this study is to answer the main research question as below:

Why do students violate school rules in Singapore Polytechnic (SP) even though they know about them?

This main research question is fragmented into the following sub questions:
1. What are the rules that SP students violate?
2. When do they violate these rules?
3. Where do they violate these rules?
4. Why do they violate these rules?
5. How do we stop students from violating the rules?

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS METHODS

This study employs a qualitative social-psychological research paradigm. The research is conducted in a Singapore polytechnic. The research takes a total of three weeks to complete. The research stretches from 11th July 2007 to 25th July 2007.

The form of data collection for the research is as below:
1. Selected informal open-ended interviews of the sixteen school rule breaker students taking an average of 15 minutes per interview. An example of an interview in this study is shown in Appendix A.

The forms of analysis used are as follow:
1. Open Coding. An example of open coding of an interview is shown in Appendix A.
2. Noting patterns and themes (Appendix B)
3. Partition variable (Appendix C)
4. Making Comparison/contrast (Appendix D)

FINDINGS
The findings for this research are as follows:

1. The type of rules violated by SP students is as follow:

Wrong dress code
In this study, wearing the wrong dress code is most commonly violated by SP students. Wearing mini skirts and shorts are commonly seen among female students whereas slippers are common among both sexes. (Appendix A, B)

The above findings answer the first sub research questions for this study.

2. The reasons for SP students violating school rules are as follow (Appendix C):

2.1) Unaware
Some students are ignorant of all the SP rules because rules are not made clear to them on the first day when they entered SP and most students have a ‘cannot be bothered’ mindset to check out SP rules.
SP rules are listed inside a student handbook which is not considered a compulsory item to be bought by all SP students. Hence, the chances of students knowing SP rules are low and chances of breaking of rules unintentionally are therefore high.

2.2) Aware
Students are actually aware of the dress code rules, but simply ignore it and continue violating the rule intentionally. This is because of:
2.2.1) Comfort and Convenience
Students feel that wearing comfortable and convenient attires to school is more important than abiding SP rules. Therefore, they disregard the dress code rule and continue wearing slippers and shorts due to convenience and comfort.

2.2.2) Peer Influence
Peers play an important role in causing students to violate school rules intentionally especially when students encounter peers wearing slippers and shorts and not being caught. Therefore, students deliberately have the wrong dress code since the majority of SP students are wearing it and no actions are taken to correct this wrong dress code.

Peers also play a part in school rule violation. Some people would be influenced by their peers, and thus would break the school rules just to fit in. Sometimes, they would see how cool their friends look with dyed hair or so, and would then follow suit.

2.2.3) Personal grooming/self conscious
While some people go for comfort, others would rather be more conscious about the way they look while they are in school. This usually applies to girls in wearing hot pants and tank tops. They wish to either look more attractive or they feel more secure or self conscious by wearing what they would look best in.

2.2.4) No Strict Enforcement
Students feel that lecturers are not doing much to catch students violating the dress code rule because they feel that lecturers cannot do much in preventing the large portion of SP students from wearing slippers and shorts. The strictest enforcement most commonly used is only the issuing of warning letter, which is not strong enough to deter students from violating the dress code rule. As a result, students violate the dress code rule intentionally since no strict enforcement is taken.

2.2.5) Freedom
Students expect more freedom in polytechnics as compared to secondary schools and junior colleges. They feel that students are treated as young adults in a tertiary education whereby lots of freedom and respects are given to them. Therefore, students tend not to abide the school rules because they long for freedom in polytechnics.

2.2.6) Challenge the Rules
Students find that wearing slippers and shorts/mini skirts does not hinder their studies and is neither offensive nor too revealing. They feel that allowing the wearing of sandals but prohibiting slippers is ridiculous because the difference lies only in one strap. This shows that students will challenge the rules and do what they think is acceptable and reasonable, thereby violating SP rules on purpose.

The above findings answer the fourth sub research question for this study.

3. Students who commonly violate the school rule are:

3.1) Year 2 and 3
It is commonly seen that seniors are the ones wearing inappropriately, either too revealing or too sloppy. This may be due to the fact that wearing conveniently and comfortably i.e. wearing slippers and shorts/mini skirts have already become a habit of them, causing students to have a ‘cannot be bothered’ mentality towards SP rules. As a result, students have no fear towards the disciplinary actions for violating rules as they were not caught in year 1.

3.2) School of Business (SB) - females
Students cited that females in School of Business are the ones that commonly violate the dress code rule. Since there are more females found in SB, chances of females wearing mini skirts/shorts and slippers are therefore higher in SB.

3.3) School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering (EEE) – males
According to students, males in EEE are more likely to have outlandish hairstyle and dress in bermudas with slippers. Since there are a higher percentage of males in EEE, there will be higher tendency for males to violate SP rules in EEE.

The above findings answer the second and third sub research questions for this study.

4. Some possible and effective punishments suggested by students for a more deterring factor include:

4.1) Deduction from GPA
Result shows that people are more concern with their result than monetary matter. They are willing to fork out money even if they break the rule. However, they are reluctant to risk violating the rule if they have to sacrifice their GPA. GPA is accumulated, if punishment implemented, it will directly affect the score that allow them to enter university if they intend to. Therefore, it’s one of the effective ways of controlling.

4.2) Doing CIP
Students, be it male or female, feel that personal image is important. They would do anything in order to secure a good impression of themselves on others. Hence, they would abide by the rules, as it is shameful to be seen doing CIP. Forcing them to do CIP (e.g. picking up rubbish and sweeping the floor) is seen as an effective form of punishment for violating the school rules.

DISCUSSION
From a social psychological viewpoint, rule-breaking increases because of the social norms set in the school’s environment. Rule-breaking is a very important social indicator in school as students who break rules would often cause damage to the school’s reputation. Thus, coupled with the inevitable phenomenon of social comparison among peers that occurs in a school setting, rule- breaking among students would escalate if no appropriate actions or enforcements are taken. Teachers and enforcers, who are unhelpful and unconcerned to rule-breaking students, can increase their anxiety. This reduces their concerns about the rules and as these students starts to break rules, they may begin to feel a sense of achievement. This could potentially affect the students’ future attitude in life. The school should treat this issue more carefully and come up with a better solution.

CONCLUSION
In order to provide the most effective solution to a problem, there is a need to understand the problem thoroughly. This applies for the case of rule violation of students in Singapore Polytechnic. From this study, three categories of rule-breaking behaviours are identified. They are the categorized under ignorance-oriented, self-innocence and convenience, which achieve the understandings of rule-breaking. By the better understanding of such behaviours, teachers and rule enforcers can better understand the behaviours of rule-breakers and diagnose their conditions promptly to treat it effectively. Nevertheless, if the teachers and rule enforcers cannot see the significance in correcting student’s rule-breaking behaviour, and refuse to act on it, this study will remain as a research article that serves the sole purpose of pleasure reading.

An exploratory study of the coping behaviours of student doing last minute school work.

2008-08-22T13:37:00.000+08:00

Title : An exploratory study of the coping behaviours of student doing last minute school work.

Conducted by : Nicholas Lee Chee Wee (P0715670, DBS/FT/2B21), Ho Su Jun Christina (P0723787, DCP2B21), Shon Boon Ling (P0757849, DIT2B21), Pei Chew Mui (P0744089, DPFM2A02), Chai Yit Hoong (P0746841, DEEE/FT/1B/28), Michelle Chong Hui Shan (P0707761, DAC/FT/2A/03), Shi Xiang (P0652267, DGDD/FT/3A/01)

AIM OF STUDY
The aim of this study is to answer the main research question as below:
Why do students choose to do last minute school work?

This main research question is fragmented into the following sub questions:
a) What are the causes (influence) of delaying school work?
b) What are the consequences of delaying school work?
c) When do they start delaying their school work? (habit)

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS METHODS

This study employs a qualitative social-psychological research paradigm. The research is conducted in a polytechnic in the western part of Singapore. The research takes a total of four weeks to complete. The research stretches from 4th July 2008 to 25th July 2008.

The forms of data collection for the research are as below:
a) Selected informal open-ended interviews of 16 students taking an average of 15 minutes per interviews.

The forms of analysis used are as follow:
a) Open Coding.
b) Noting relations between variables
c) Clustering

FINDINGS
The findings for this research are as follows:
a) The causes that lead to students doing their assignment last minute are as follow:

Difficulty of the assignment
Students look at the difficulty of the assignment to decide if they want to do the work early or last minute. This could be because they do not understand the assignment aspects or their lessons. However, towards the dateline of the assignment, students will be left with no choice but to complete the assignment. This assignment could be rushed through or copied from others.

Weight-age of assignment
Students look at the contribution of the percentage towards to the entire module. Assignments which have a higher weight-age are often more highly regarded by students; while assignments with a lower weight-age are less regarded. When the assignments are highly regarded, students will put set aside more time for it

Interest towards work
Students tend to work in accordance towards their interest in a particular module. For example, they will put in more time and effort into a module which they are interested in, as compared to one module which they have got no interest in.

Peer Influence
Individuals may be influence by their peers. For example, when the majority of the classmates do not start their assignments early, the minority will tend to go with the flow.

Other commitments
From the interviews, students are often engaged in other commitments such as Co-Curriculum Activities (CCA), boy-girl relationships (BGR), and part-time job. These commitments have higher priority than school assignments. This causes them to push assignments to a later date and doing them when the datelines are nearer.
Distractions
Students tend to neglect their work and participate in other leisure activities such as gaming, surfing the internet, watching television, hanging out with friends, etc.

b) The consequences of delaying school work

Lack of Sleep
Occurrence of careless mistakes
Stress
Remorseful
Under performance
Tendency to neglect other assignments of lower weight-age
Trapped in a vicious cycle of doing last minute assignment (heavy workload)

When assignments start to accumulate, students will feel stress and burn midnight oil to complete their assignments. This causes them to have a lack of sleep, which in turn may lead to more occurrences of careless mistakes and thus under perform. The students may then feel remorseful as because they could have achieved quality work if they did not do last minute work.

Also, when there are 2 assignments of different weight-age due on the same deadline, students will tend to focus on the assignment with higher weight-age and neglect the other assignments.

This scenario will keep occurring if more work (with deadline nearing to the current assignment) is introduced into their existing workload and thus the students are trapped in this vicious cycle.

c) When do they start delaying their school work? (habit)
1. Attitude towards work
The attitude towards work largely constitute to their choice of doing their assignments last minute. Students tend to do their work when they feel like to. Comments such as “I do not have the mood” are commonly used as excuses. Students who hold the apathetic attitude tend to leave their work undone.

Three categories of coping behaviours employed by students doing last minute work evolve from this study. They are named as the categories of procrastinating behaviours, delusive behaviours and resistant behaviours respectively in this study. This answers the first, second and third sub research question for this study.

i) Procrastinating Behaviours
Procrastinating behaviours are subdivided into self procrastinating behaviours and group procrastinating behaviours.
Self-procrastinating behaviours
Delayed action in doing assignment
Such students tend to always put aside their work with or without doing it, until the deadline is approaching. The excuses they gave are always ‘I have no mood to do’, ‘I don’t know how to do’ or ‘Still got so much time’ and etc…

Group procrastinating behaviours
Doing non assignment related activities
Such students tend to procrastinate in a group (friends, classmates...), they will put aside their assignments and do it at another date or somewhere near deadline. They tend to do a bit of their work first, but after some time, they will start doing other stuff and progress to not wanting to do the assignment anymore.

ii) Delusive Behaviours
Delusive behaviours are divided broadly into two subcategories- self-deluding behaviours and teacher deluding behaviours.

Self Deluding Behaviours
Refusal to admit doing last minute work is wrong
Students will blame other events, such as too many assignments thus giving them no choice but to do last minute work. The fault lies in the lecturers who are flooding them with assignments instead of themselves for the poor time management. Students will also think that doing last minute work is correct and they will reaffirm it when asked about doing last minute work. Thus, they will keep doing last minute work, it become like a habit. They tend to give reasons like ‘it helps me focuses, ‘there’s no difference from starting the work early’ and etc. Some even thought that doing last minute work, have a better quality than doing the work in a earlier time.

Self affirmation
Reduce the impact of a dissonance- arousing threat to their self-concept by focusing on and affirming their competence on some dimension unrelated to the threat. Such students when they are dragging the school work will tell oneself that he still has the time; the deadline for the work to submit is still long.

Teacher Deluding Behaviours
Deliberate deadline changing
Students may request to change the dead line of the assignment, giving excuses like forgotten the dead line of the assignment thus the assignment could not be submitted on the actual day to support their stand.

Faking illness, giving excuses
Students will give fictional excuse such as illness, funeral, etc as reason forcing them to do last minute assignments. Students will also pretend to be sick to skip lesson giving them one extra day to do the work. They will tell the lecturers that they cannot come on that day, so they can only hand it in today. Indirectly, they postponed the deadline of the assignment

Copying of assignment from others
Students not only not do their assignment till the last minute, but many also copy their assignments from their friends at the last possible minute. They tend to unthinkingly shift their attention to their peers’ answers and copy immediately from them. This action is almost automatic to such students observed. Some of them choose to copy as their peers are still in the process of doing while the others prefer to copy only when their peers have finished the assignment. All these actions are performed discreetly outside the view of the teacher.

iii) Resistant Behaviours
Resistant behaviours are categorised into two groups – independent resistance and influencing resistance.

Independent Resistance
Failure to bring assignment
Such students will claim that they forget to bring their due assignment. They are usually unapologetic about it. They also do care about the admonishments or punishments meted to them.

Deliberately skip lesson
Such students will skip the lesson where they have to hand in their assignment, so that they have one more day to do the assignment. They are also ready to take any admonishments or punishments meted out by the teacher.

Influencing Resistance
Promoting others to hand in together
Students will try to promote their friends/classmates to hand in together/as a class together, applying peer pressure, and nudging on their slacker personality hidden inside of them. This will lead to a large bunch of students handing in their work late together.

DISCUSSION
From a social psychological viewpoint, habit of doing last minute work arises because of their attitudes towards assignment and workloads. Teachers, who are unhelpful and unconcerned to the needs of these students, can further their attitude towards doing last minute work. As these students continued to keep doing last minute work, they begin to feel that it is a social norm to do last minute work. In the long run, they will feel that it’s alright doing last minute work. This greatly reduces their self efficacy of learning. The whole purpose of doing assignment is thus changed to ‘just finish it’ kind of mentality. They missed out the learning experiences from doing the assignment properly. Also, as our education system teaches us that doing last minute work is wrong. To counter such unpleasant feelings caused by cognitive dissonance, they begin to engage in coping behaviours that aim to delude. This is because such coping behaviours are psychologically fruitful to them than to engage in changing their perspective and habit which requires a lot of effort, time and self-discipline.

Conclusion
Many students in Singapore have this bad habit of waiting till the last minute before rushing out their assignments, this is a very worrying trend that has plagued schools and institutions around the island and with none of them spared. This trend has the potential of wrecking the lives of the youths who are engaging in this sort of activities with many of them getting poor results as a direct consequence for their bad habit. With this bad results, many of them then proceed to ruin their future career options .Also many students because of them rushing their assignments, are unable to understand the subject well and thus lead to them struggling and lost when the lecturer moves on to more deeper topics.

In addition this may in turn affect the student health as they had to burn midnight oil just to complete their work. Thus In order to provide the most effective solution to a problem, there is a need to understand the problem thoroughly. From this study, three categories of coping behaviours of students doing last minute work evolve. They are the categories of procrastinating behaviours, delusive behaviours and resistant behaviours.

By knowing the behaviours, lecturers can have a better understanding of the students and help to solve the problem. However if the lecturers choose to ignore this, the trend of students waiting till the last minute before rushing out their assignment will continue and getting worse.

A study of why the students of Singapore Polytechnic smoke in the campus despite knowing the laws restrict so.

2008-08-22T11:22:00.002+08:00

Title
A study of why the students of Singapore Polytechnic smoke in the campus despite knowing the laws restrict so.

Done by: (Webmaster: The identities of the researchers are protected due to the sensitivity of this study. They are a brave lot. Salute them!)

Aim of Study
The aim of the study is to answer the main research question below:
· Why do students smoke in campus when they clearly know it is against the campus laws?

This main research questions is fragmented into the following sub-questions:
· What are the consequences of smoking in Singapore Polytechnic? What do you think of the consequences?
· Where in the campus do students usually smoke at? What are their behaviours when smoking in the campus? Why?
· How far to an extent would students go just to be able to smoke?

Data Collection and Analysis Methods
This study employs a qualitative social-psychological research paradigm. This research was conducted in Singapore Polytechnic, taking a total of eight weeks (30th May 2008 to 25th July 2008) to complete.

The form of data collection for this research is as follows:
Student Interviewers; by coming up with interview questions to interview selected students of Singapore Polytechnic. An example of the interview questions is shown in the Appendix.

The form of analysis is used as follows:
Open Coding.

Findings
The Common Areas
The common spots disclosed by the interviewees who smoke are toilets. This fact can be tallied by the interviewees who do not smoke by the encounters with toilets which reek of the smell of cigarette smoke. Other places disclosed as a common smoking area include the deserted basement of Foot Court 5. There are other interviewees who refrained from disclosing their common smoking spots.

Reasons why the students smoke in the campus
• Inability to resist the temptations to smoke
They cannot resist the temptations to smoke as the people around them to smoke. This usually implies to heavy smokers who would consistently walk out of the class to smoke in order for them to stay focus and pay attention during lessons. They become too dependent on the cigarettes to listen in class.

• Influence of friends
Friends do play an important part for students who choose to smoke in school. It is usually when an individual who smokes, ask his friends to go along with him/her to smoke. It ends up having more people who smoke as some of these students who smoke in campus are social smokers. They main intention is to accompany their friends. And it is when their friends who smoke offer them a cigarette that they all end up smoking.

• Find it far to walk out of school
Some feel that walking out of school to catch a puff is a hassle. They find the distance traveled is far and they are lazy to do so. They would rather smoke in school as it is more convenient to do so.
• Secluded areas in school
There are certain areas in the school where most smokers would go too. They do so as they realised that very seldom do school staffs walk pass there and there is no one to watch them. Since this is the case, they would stay there to smoke. These areas do not have any sensors or staff to catch them smoking as it is a more secluded area with very little or even no crowd at all.

How the non-smokers in the campus feel about the issue

In this study, it is shown that most of the non-smokers are affected by the smokers. They think that smoking is not only unhealthy but also a waste of money and time. They do not want to spend such amount of money and in the end, they are killing themselves. There are some non-smokers who think that smoking only shows those smokers are immature and it is not as cool as what they think. However, there are still some non-smokers who fully understand why smokers smoke.

Non-smoking students who have been interviewed are generally affected by this smoking issue. They seem to be concerned about their surroundings and the atmosphere of the place they are in. With this, we can see why some of these students are against students who smoke within the campus. Students who do not smoke tend to have a negative outlook on students who smoke within the campus; some to the extent that they hate the people who smoke within the campus.

Non-smokers are affected mostly by smelling the smokes. As we all know, passive smoking kills twice as fast as smoking itself. Non-smokers feel that is it very irritated but they cannot change the situation. Therefore, majority of them choose not to care about it and just try not to walk pass those people who are smoking. They do not think there is a point to stop the smokers or report to someone unless he/she is related to them.

We can definitely say that some students are biased towards smokers and they tend to ‘hate’ them more due to the fact that they still smoke within the campus even though it is against the school rules. Therefore, non-smokers are generally affected by this issue due to them being uncomfortable with having students who smoke within the campus itself.

Non-smokers feel that this is a rather big issue and that the school should implement harsher punishments to students who smoke within the campus. With this, it shows that majority of the non-smokers are really against students who smoke and that they are willing to share their opinions in order to eliminate students who smoke within the campus. This also shows that they are concerned about this issue and are in a way affected by the actions of smokers.

Suggestions to resolve the issue
From our survey respondents, they think that having fines and punishment is not enough to solve the smoking issue in our campus. Furthermore, our school security is not possible to cover the entire Singapore Polytechnic with such a low numbers.

The following some of the more prominent recommendations that respondents have in accordance to what smoking issue inside Singapore Polytechnic’s campus:

1) Smoke detector
With reference to the findings in the survey done by our student researchers, a number of respondents indicated that the school can take steps and insert smoke detectors at every corner of the school. For example, these smoke detectors should be placed at “hot spots” whereby most of the time smokers will visit to take a puff and think that they will not get caught as the area is dark, secluded or hard to access. These smoke detectors work in the way such that they will let a sounding alarm whenever the detector senses any traces of cigarette’s smoke around it, whenever the alarm is sounded, there will be a security breach light that lights up at the campus’s security post. The benefits of smoke detectors are as follows:

The alarm will be able to frighten off the smokers.
Secondly, the school will be able to catch those groups of smokers.

2) Increase fines
Many of the respondents think that the fines are not pricey enough and the smokers are not afraid of the small amount of fine as they do not feel the pinch on their fingers. Respondents recommend that the school should increase our fines to a minimum of $5000. Firstly, this huge amount should be able to let the smokers feel the pinch on their fingers. And secondly, the parents would not be able to pay for them. With the fines increases to a minimum of $5000, it would be able to stop those smokers.

A STUDY OF WHY STUDENTS PLAY ELECTRONIC GADGETS DURING LECTURES

2008-08-22T11:17:00.000+08:00

A STUDY OF WHY STUDENTS PLAY ELECTRONIC GADGETS DURING LECTURES

DONE BY: CHAN HAN WEN NICHOLAS P0709127
LOH SOK KHIM P0656120
TAN XI LIANG P0614315
SHIRIN CHUA HUI YING` P0627290
NG REN JYE P0632333
CHIA KA WEI EDWIN P0735476
LEONG HWEE YING P0743611

Aim Of Study

The study, titled “why students play electronic gadgets during lectures?” is carried out with the intent of gaining an insight of the “what” and “why” inside the student’ mind when they engage themselves in such conduct.

Ultimately, we hope to find out the answer for the state study. Devise certain guidelines and regulation that Singapore Polytechnic can adopt to prevent such conduct from taking place.

The main research question is divided into 3 sub questions:
a. Why are the games attractive?
b. Why do they choose to play games during lecture?
c. What are the kinds of gadgets that they are attracted to?

Data Collection And Analysis Methods

The research is conducted in Singapore polytechnic. The research took a total of three weeks to complete. The research stretches from 12th July 2008 to 26 July 2008.

The statistics and the way data was collected is stated below:

Interviews are conducted among 15 students from Singapore Polytechnic (SP) who come from different courses and different schools (as in business, design etc). 15 interview questions were asked per interviewee.

The forms of analysis used are as follow:
a) Open Coding. Examples of open coding of an interview are shown in Appendix A to Appendix G respectively.
b) Noting themes, patterns
c) Noting relations between variables
d) Clustering
e) Counting

Findings

The findings for this research are as follows:

7.1 Factors That Student Play Electronic Gadgets During Lectures
The different types of students, lectures and environment are the main causes as to why students play electronic gadgets during lectures. This answers the first and second questions of this study.

7.1.1 Type of Students

For these group of students, they do not intend to listen to lecture as they do not think that it is important or relevant to their study. As the lecture is too dry, the students are more tempted to play the gadgets instead. Typically, the students are easily influence by peers. Not attentive, easily distracted students. The students are too dependent on their lecturer giving tips. On the other hand, there are student who are independent and they prefer to study by their own. These kind of students thinks that they can score better if they study on their own rather than listen to the lecturer. These groups of students are also selfish as they do not care about others students who are attentive and want to learn from the lectures. Another possibility is that some students did not have much of a childhood, and didn’t get to experience the joys of playing, and are making up for it when they are older.

7.1.2 Type of Lecturers

The lecturers usually have monotonous voices, which makes it harder for students to concentrate, adding to the fact that the lesson is already boring to them, thus students want to keep themselves awake and entertained by playing electronic gadgets. It is even worse when lecturers make no attempt to engage the students, and to make them part of the lesson and learning process. They take no action even when they know that the students are not paying attention. This is probably because they are either too tired or cant be bothered, as they have seen this situation too many times.

7.1.3 Environment

Students think that what is wrong may be right because everyone around them is doing it.. Another reason is that gaming can be addictive and a form of relaxation (escapism) from a stressful hectic life or boring lectures. During lectures, students who do not want to listen to the lecture will get their electronic gadgets (eg. Mobile phone, Play Station Portable(PSP), Laptop). They will influence those attentive students to play as well.

7.2 Behavior of Student Who Play Electronic Gadgets During Lectures
There are a few types of behaviors which are common among students who play electronic gadgets during lecture that we can conclude from this study. This answers the second question of this study.

7.2.1 Conformity behaviors
The students involved in this study do state that they are affecting their friends around them in class, and influencing them to play. When interviewees are playing in class, the students sitting around him/her will get affected. Their friend will start to play electronic gadgets together as they see the interviewees play.

7.2.2 Internal attribution
The students who play electronic gadgets during lectures attribute that the student who are affected by them do not have self discipline. They think that it is their lack of self discipline rather then themselves directly affecting them. Besides that, the interviewees also think that the students who want to listen to lectures will stay focused.

7.2.3 Utilitarian attitude
The student will try to hide the electronic gadgets while they are playing to avoid attention from their lecturer. Besides that, the interviewee also assumes that they have gotten approval from their lecturer to play in class.

7.2.4 Ego defensive attitude
The students who play electronic gadgets during lessons have lack of interest and motivation to study. The students are too lazy to bother about the lecturer and try to find ways to entertain themselves (thus playing electronic gadgets).

7.2.5 Value expression attitude
The students refused to listen to the lecturer even after they have been warned. This shows that the students are lack of self-discipline and are defiant. They will prefer to study on their own. The student will request lecturers to post all the notes and important information on blackboard so that they can study before exam.

7.3 Attitude of Student Who Play Electronic Gadgets During Lectures

7.3.1 Killing time
Most students take out their devices usually when they are bored. E.g. during travelling trips and lectures.

7.3.2 Awareness of lecturers
Most lecturers are aware but they do not take action as long as the students involved do not disturb the rest of the class.

7.3.3 Playing with companions
Many of them play with friends as it is more competitive and challenging than playing with AI.

7.3.4 Distracting classmates
They do not bother if their classmates are distracted by them. They probably feel that it is not a cause for concern as it is of their own wish to watch.

7.3.5 Regrets
Most do not regret and would continue to do it. Those who regret did not bother to change their attitude.

7.4 Comments About Playing Electronic Gadgets During Lecture

Comments about playing electronic gadgets during lecture
Number of participants mentioning item (N=7)
Unable to pay attention
2
Interesting to play with friends
4
Will not affect grades
1
Bored, keep him self occupied
5
Keep themselves awake
4
Kill time
3
Lecture not ‘attractive’
2
Attracted / addicted to games
1
Friend influence (peer pressure)
4
Too quiet
1
Lecturer ‘don’t care’
2

7.5 Type of Electronic Gadgets Played By Student During Lectures
This answers the third questions of this study.

Type of electronic gadgets used
Number of participants mentioning item (N=7)
Play station portable (PSP)
4
Hand phone
5
Laptop, computer
3
Nintendo DS
3
MP3
2

8. Conclusion

For all the research and observations, the researcher must fully understand the problem. This provides the most effective and accurate data collection. From this study, the factors that caused students to play electronic gadgets during lectures can be grouped into 3 categories. These 3 categories are type of students, type of lecturers and environment. By knowing these 3 categories, attitude and behavior of students, the lecturers and counselors in school will have a better understanding about their students. After knowing the causes of their students’ behavior, the lecturers can improve their ways and methods of teaching. This helps to solve the problem and increase the efficiency of teaching. From the reflection of students involved in this research, they found that the lecturers are too boring, and that the lectures are a waste of time. This results in them choosing to play electronic gadgets during lecturers. Peer pressure is also a major factor. The students are affected by peers around them and are more willing to cooperate with them.

Why are we usually unable to find a table during peak hours?

2008-08-14T10:44:00.002+08:00

Title : Why are we usually unable to find a table during peak hours?

Date : 29th July 2008, AY 2008/09, Semester 1
Conducted by :
Nur Azlin Mohd Afendy p0623407
Nur Afidah Binte Afandi p0733078
Tang Tat Chong p0741060
Mohamed Hizam p0763701
Fazli
Sheila p0759010
Jingxian p0748588
Flex p0661094

AIM OF STUDY
The aim of this study is to answer the main research question as below:
Our main aim of the study conducted was to the find out how students react and behave in a situation where there is a crowded food court and they needed that time to have their lunch. Ultimately, to further support the aim of the study, research questions posed by the group had to be answered.

This main research question is fragmented into the following sub questions:
a) Why students hang around the table after eating?
b) What are the areas where the student cannot find seats?
c) How does the student overcome this lack of seats during lunchtime?

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS METHODS
This study employs a qualitative social-psychological research paradigm. The research is conducted in all food courts in Singapore Polytechnic. The research takes a total of four weeks to complete. The research stretches from 9th July 2008 to 30th July 2008.

The forms of data collection for the research are as below:
a) Non participant observation of about 5 groups of students’ behaviours in a crowded food court during peak hour, taking a total of 5 observation sessions of 15 minutes each. An example of an observation in this study is shown in Findings.
b) Selected informal open-ended interviews of selected random students in the crowded food court, taking an average of 10 minutes per interviews. An example of an interview in this study is shown in Appendix A.

Data Collection and Analysis Methods
After, we had conducted the interviews for our questions; we obtained a wide different and similar answer. We have written data to give our interviews more credibility. Using the data collected we made our analysis and compile the data.
Subsequently analyzing what we have, we drew a mind map for understanding.

The forms of analysis used are as follow:
a) Interviews
b) Sharing Data

FINDINGS (use diagrams or tables to supplement your report when needed)
The findings for this research are as follows:
a) The condition that causes overcrowding during lunch hour at a certain food court is as follows:

i) Timing
In this study, it is shown that all the students studying in SP are having the same lunch break. Due to this, during lunch break almost every time students need to wait for a long time before they can get a seat. Sometimes students will attend lesson late because of overcrowding at food court.

ii) Peers
Student likes to have lunch together with their friends. Therefore many of them will have lunch in big group and it is hard to find seats for big group. Many will continue waiting in food court for seats. If they get sick and tired of waiting then they will proceed to buy packet food and eat somewhere else.

iii) Area
One of the factors is that after their last lesson, students will prefer to go to the nearest food court to have lunch. If a certain area of students has the same lunch break, then there will be an overcrowding of students at that particular food court.
The above findings answer the first, second and third sub research questions for this study.

b) Categories that will help in solving the overcrowding of food court during lunch hour. They are cohesiveness and social psychology. This answers the fourth sub research question for this study.

i) Cohesiveness
The strength of the relationships that link members of a group together and are essentially what keeps people in a group or causes them to stick together.

After lesson, students will always gather together and they will proceed to have lunch together. This will result in students having lunch in big group or as a class. This will make their bonding even closer and they can discuss their school work together and if they encounter any problems they will solve it together. Having lunch in big groups is good and fun but the only problem is that it is hard to find table for such a big group in a crowded food court.

Furthermore, every time when we are eating in food court we can see that group of students eating in food court are always in big group of 4 and above. Even if there’s table, it only can fit 4-5 persons. If they sit separately, slim chances that they can sit side by side. Some students when gotten a seat and had their lunch, they will sit and wait till their next lesson is about to start then they will leave their seat. Only a minority will quickly finished their food and give up their seats for others. This will only add on to the problems of overcrowding of students at a certain period like lunch hour.

ii) Social psychology
The scientific study of how individual thinks about, interact with, and influence each other.

Students would rather go to the nearest food court to have their lunch, as they wouldn't want to waste their time travelling to another food court which will eat into their one hour lunch break time. Moreover, they will also consider where is the next location they'll be going to and then decide where to eat for their convenience. Furthermore, all students in Singapore Poly are having the same break time at 12noon. This leads to overcrowding of students at a particular food court.

Eg. Students from business school will usually have their lunch at Food court 6. They are seldom seen in other food courts as most of their lectures are held in business block. And with the same break time for all Singapore Poly students, every food court will face the same problem, Overcrowding. Business students wouldn't want to waste their time travelling back to business block where their lectures will be held at from the other food court which they had their lunch earlier on. As it is time consuming and inconvenient for them to do so.

Food courts in SP preferred
FC1
5.13%
FC2
5.13%
FC3
20.51%
FC4
28.21%
FC5
5.13%
FC6
35.90%

Waiting queue timing
Time
5mins
10mins
15mins
20mins
Peak Hours
Fast

Average
Moderate
Worst Scenario

Choice in a crowded food court ended up in
Wait for a table
Make the food take away
Totally skip lunch
Likely (45%)
Less likely
(40%)
Rarely
(15))

Findings

The causes:

Insufficient time
1hr = break time (total time given)
5mins = to the FC
15mins = queue time
15mins = ordering food
20mins = consume food
5mins = back to class

Utilization of tables/chairs

Clearing table:
Short of manpower is one of the most challenging face by cleaners. A lack number to clear could hardly manage to keep up with the continuous large amount of students occupying and reoccupying the seats and tables. Most area is not easily to be cleared with the overcrowding students all around.

Misused:
Not all seats have been used, most of the spaces were occupied by their laptops, bags and some even their tray. Naturally no one seems to clear their table at all after each meal. There are even students who would loiter even at a peak hours not giving up relentlessly to the jam pack timing.

Mindsets:
Many of us would not share or would occupy an empty seat on a table sharing with the others.

Large number of students:
As many of them used up all of the tables and chairs, those who also want to have their lunch may not have any enough time to eat. One of the causes of a crowded food court is due to the same lunch time. In addition, there are also long queues and that may lead to long waiting time. An alternative way to find seats and have lunch is by having packet food.

DISCUSSION (Note: not compulsory, teams that work on this section are graded more favourably and there is no need to relate your findings to other studies since there is no literature review)

We took a step back looking at the situation as a whole, from ground up. The mind set of where to go for lunch, where to buy or if all fails what student would do.

We discover on different outcome that could lead to the lack of seats. It became interesting when we notice on social behaviour among students in a crowded food court. (E.g. when a table have 4 seats and 3 is occupied would you taken up that seat if you need one?) . This is a point we observe that tables are use in form of groups, where not all seats is been used utmost.

Most normal behaviour we understand long queues means something worth waiting to buy but if the line move too slowly this could also slow the amount of the student using the food courts in the end. (So how long will you able to wait to satisfy the long queue and the hunger? It’s a race against time!)

For every satisfying conquest of ending battle in the food court, plates, bowls and other items are left on the table waiting to be cleared for the next group of student. Many tables occupying and re-occupying, we wonder would it be quicker if we just did the cleaning for faster usage of the seats.

CONCLUSION
We believe hunger is a strong motivation for us to create or our biggest flaw of all. Even though we are uniquely different from one another all became familiar to each other when urge for food comes in mind. There would be some who would care and realize too well to share, while some use them as if they had gain a plot of land. The system of lunch time is less than perfect but everyday student would endure to wait, to either take the challenge for a seat or just give up overall. Our thought to the conclusion, even with the rules in queuing and courtesy in providing seat for the next person is totally limited. We concur careful planning in the schedule dividing the time between 1st, 2nd and 3rd years student might at least give a fighting chance for having a decent lunch period.

An exploratory study of why the foodcourts in Singapore are very packed during peak periods.

2008-08-14T10:34:00.002+08:00

Title : An exploratory study of why the foodcourts in Singapore
Polytechnic are very packed during peak periods.

Date : 30th July 2008, AY 2008/09, Semester 1
Conducted by : Muhammad Fazil (P0628866, DEEE/FT/3A04),
Hoo Chan Hung (P0764658, DME/3A03),
Gan Ze Hao Alex (P0720193, DBIT/FT/2A/02),
Syirin (P0707480, DAC/FT/2A/02),
Siti Wahidah (P0730301, DEC/2B),
Looi JieHui (P0720474, DBIT/FT/2A/11),
Foo Dun Jie (P0727301, DCMD/FT/2A/02),
Zhen Zhen (P0663111, DMA/2B/21)

AIM OF STUDY
The aim of this study is to answer the main research question as below:

The aim of this study is to achieve a better knowledge on why the food courts are very crowded during peak periods such as lunch time even with six foodcourts build around Singapore Polytechnic; and hopes to provide a better understanding on why this is a problem and to provide possible solutions to ease the current problem.

This main research question is fragmented into the following sub questions:
a) Why are there not enough tables and seats to accommodate the students and lecturers?
b) Who are using the foodcourts?
c) When is the food courts crowded?
d) Where are the crowded food courts?
e) How do the students deal with the crowding?

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS METHODS

This study is conducted in Singapore Polytechnic food courts by various students from different schools. This study takes the total of 3 weeks to complete. The research stretches from 9 July to 23 July 2008.

The forms of data collection for the research are as below:
a) Non participant observation of the students’ behaviours in different food courts, taking a total of two observation sessions of 30 minutes each over a period of five days.
b) Selected informal open-ended interviews of the sixteen students taking an average of 5 minutes per interviews.

The forms of analysis used are as follow:
a) Open Coding
b) Noting relations between variables
c) Finding intervening variables
d) Clustering

FINDINGS (use diagrams or tables to supplement your report when needed)
The findings for this research are as follows:

a) The conditions that causes the foodcourts in Singapore Polytechnic to be overcrowded are as follows:

i) Types of lecturers
In this study, it is shown lecturers are considerate as they just use the eating areas for just eating. They do not use the tables for marking papers, chit chatting, and playing game. We overheard them saying ‘Lets talk in our office’, and left the place instead of sitting at the foodcourt and occupying the seats.

ii) Types of students
There are many different types of activities that the students did in the foodcourt besides eating. There are the students who simply eat and go off as soon as their done eating. The rest of the students stay in the foodcourt to do other activities. They do activities such as playing games, cards, talking, studying, reading comic and looking at eye candy. Even though there are other students around waiting for seats, they continue to do these activities. They pretend that they are not aware of their surroundings.

b) Three categories of coping behaviours employed by students in the various food courts evolve from this study. They are named as the categories of procrastinating behaviours respectively in this study.

i) Procrastinating Behaviours
Procrastinating behaviours are subdivided into self procrastinating behaviours and group procrastinating behaviours.

Self-procrastinating behaviours

Undesired course of actions of individuals
Individuals sometimes feel that they are obliged to “reserve” seats for their friends who are not present in the food court at the point in time. They will occupy the empty seats first and wait for their friends to come. This is something we generally observe among individuals.

Inconsideration
Upon observation, we realised that some students are inconsiderate in their actions. For instance, a student who comes to the food court alone to have his lunch is found utilising an empty table for four. He could have occupied an empty table for two users instead. Meanwhile, for other large groups, they have to wait until the individual user gives up the space in order for them to occupy it. This self-centred, inconsiderate and procrastinating behaviour of students lead to the overcrowding problem of food courts.

Group procrastinating behaviours

Group procrastination
During lunch time, many students are found doing other activities instead of having their lunch. These activities include studying, talking and playing games. It is commonly known that the principal activity in a food court is to eat, but most students utilize the space to complete tasks that are unnecessary. Students who realise that other groups are waiting for empty seats are ignorant of their surroundings. They do not bother to give up their seats.

Deliberate actions
Students are observed to portray deliberate ignorance and negligence towards other groups who are waiting for the seats. Actions include, averting their gaze towards another direction and also, intentionally keeping themselves occupied by checking the time once in a while and text messaging someone through their mobile phones.

ii) Delusive Behaviours
Delusive behaviours are divided broadly into two subcategories- self-deluding behaviours and teacher deluding behaviours.

Self Deluding Behaviours
Refusal to give up seats
They presume that others will give up their seats for those who are waiting for seats. They also presume that it is their rights to use the seat as they wish after they finished their meals. They presume that they have the rights to occupy the seats unless someone asks them to leave. They presume that it is everyone’s personal rights to find a solution for them when they cannot find a seat.

Refusal to eat outside school
They presume that it is too much of a rush for them to go out of school to eat and avoid the crowded foodcourts. They presume that other people would go out of school to eat. They presume they have the rights to eat at the foodcourts built in the school and it is their rights to eat in school. They presume there is enough seats in foodcourts as there are 6 foodcourts in SP. They presume that they do not have enough time to go out of school to eat and go back in time for lesson. They presume that the food outside is not as nice as the food in school. They presume that it is too much effort to go out somewhere to eat and find that it is more convenient to eat somewhere near, which is SP. They presume that they are too tired to go out of school to eat.

Refusal to check answers
There are instances where some mathematics anxious students leave their final solutions as they are without checking if they are correct. In most cases, they present their solutions in an appropriate number of mathematical steps. When the teacher asks them to check their solutions from the correct answers provided at the back of their textbooks, they do not do it. They are also not interested in comparing their answers with their classmates. Instead, they will go straight to the next question. If the teacher comes by and ask them if their answers are correct, they will usually give responses like, “check later”, “think so”, “should be correct” etc. A quick check by the researcher on their answers usually yields incorrect ones.

Peer Deluding Behaviours
Group behaviour influencing individuals and other groups
While in the food-courts, we often see many people clustered in groups hogging the seats. As time passes, these actions became justified as they are being done in groups. Therefore other students, whether in groups or as individuals will come to having the mindset that hogging the seats after their meals is a normal thing to do. Therefore with the cycle of the students influencing others again and again, it becomes a peer deluding behaviour.

Deliberately dragging eating time.
They will drag the time they take to eat in order to occupy their seats for the full break time so that they would not have to find another spot to sit down to wait for their break time to end. They would also occupy the seats and take their time to eat when they have other friends that are on their way to occupy their seats. They are being considerate to their friends by helping their friends reserve the seats, however, they are being inconsiderate to the other people who are waiting for their seats. When they reserve the seats for their friends, the people who are waiting for their seats have to wait for a longer time as the seats would then be occupied by their friends.

Pretend others will give up their seats for people waiting
Often in food courts, people tend to occupy their seats after their meals with the mindset thinking that other people will give up their seats rather than they themselves give up their seats. They will pretend not to have eye contact with those who are waiting for seats, engross in doing their own things, or even asking their friends to buy some drinks or desserts to give them a reason to occupy the seats.

Bags occupies seats
Students leave their bags on the seats to reserve the seats for themselves while they purchase their food. There are also students who put their bags on seats because they refuse to put their bags on their lap or on the floor. This is due to the fact that they find it uncomfortable to put their bags on their lap while eating. They find that they want to enjoy their meal in comfort and use the seats to place their bags. They also have the mentality that they have the rights to occupy as many seats as they have to. When there are lesser seats around certain tables, even if that table is not occupied, people cannot settle down and eat simply because there is no seats available.

Small group, big table
There are students who occupy big tables but they are only a small group of students. They take up more seats than they need to, and they are unwilling to share the seats with other people. They cause the foodcourt to require more seats than it really required. They occupy these seats by telling other people that they have friends coming or by putting their bags on the seats. They show unfriendliness to others in order to keep them away from asking for seats.

iii) Outsiders occupying seats
Students from other schools come to our foodcourts to occupy and compete for seats with students in the foodcourt. They cause the foodcourts in SP to have even more students in the foodcourts than it is originally built to handle. They come to our foodcourts to eat because it is a lot cheaper. They are, however, inconsiderate to the students in SP.

DISCUSSION (Note: not compulsory, teams that work on this section are graded more favourably and there is no need to relate your findings to other studies since there is no literature review)

From a social psychological viewpoint, crowded foodcourts can cause a drastic change on students and lecturers. By skipping lunch cause of the crowded foodcourts, students tend to only have their lunch during the evening time that is close to their dinner time. Cause of this students go hungry during lesson times and tend to be distracted away from class activities. Hungry man brings up and angry man thus causes students to be frustrated and tend to get angry easily over simple matters. Crowded foodcourts also causes students to take away their food and eat at corridors and at study areas which is so troublesome. Due to this there is a lack of study area too. It would be so great if there is a strict rule imposed by higher authority stating clearly that “Eating must be done in eating areas, studying must be done in study areas, gaming must be done outside school…” this will really help as well as if measures are taken to increase the foodcourt areas and setting up more chairs and tables. After all, every student pays for the school fees. They should all get to enjoy their lunch on the comfort of the chairs and tables in the foodcourts and not on the floors and study areas!

CONCLUSION
In order to provide the most effective solution to a problem, there is a need to understand the problem thoroughly. This applies for the case of the crowded foodcourts in Singapore Polytechnic. From this study, three categories of coping behaviours of students at crowded foodcourts are used. They are the categories of procrastinating behaviours, delusive behaviours, which achieve the aims of easing the crowded foodcourts so that all can have their time of lunch. Knowing the use of such behaviours, teachers and students can better understand the behaviours of their current problem faced at foodcourts. Nevertheless, if the teachers and students do not see the use of having to know and solve the problem of the crowded foodcourts, this study will remain a research article that serves the sole purpose of pleasure reading.

An exploratory study of the thoughts of Singapore Polytechnic students who skip classes as to why they do so.

2008-08-14T10:23:00.002+08:00

Title: An exploratory study of the thoughts of Singapore Polytechnic students who skip classes as to why they do so.

Date: 8th July 2008, AY 2008/09, Semester 2
Conducted by: Group: I.M. - Su, Kwan Teck, Ken, John, Jia Yin, Fiona, Ariff

AIM OF STUDY
The aim of this study is to answer the main research question as below:

Why do Singapore Polytechnic students skip classes?

This main research question is fragmented into the following sub questions:
How often do students skip their classes?
What kind of classes do students skip?
How do students feel when skipping classes?
What are the consequences that they encounter for skipping classes?
What are the reasons for them skipping classes?
How important are lecture and tutorial classes to them?

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS METHODS
The research is conducted in Singapore Polytechnic by observation of the students of several courses in SP. The research takes a total of three weeks to complete. The research stretches from 8th July 2008 to 29th July 2008.

The forms of data collection for the research are as below:
a) Selected informal open-ended interviews of the fourteen skipping-class students taking an average of 5 minutes per interviews.
b) Attending the classes the students skipped to observe the teaching environment, ultimately to find out what the reasons are behind them skipping these classes.

The forms of analysis used are as follow:
a) Clustering
b) Observational Data - Conducted in several classes of the interviewees.

c) FINDINGS
The findings for this research are as follows:

The psychological categories that evoke their skipping classes are as follows:

1) Boredom
Most of the students seem to have short attention spans, doing something else instead of listening to the lesson. Learning in a dull teaching environment contributes greatly in shortening their attentiveness to the lecture. A further breakdown of this category pinpoints the roles each character in the teaching environment plays in making the class a ‘boring’ one, resulting in students skipping them:

a) The teachers (includes lecturers, tutors and practical-lesson teachers)
In this study, it is shown that teachers with monotonous voices, ‘drawling’ slangs and unconcerned teaching attitudes evoke boredomness towards some of the interviewed students. A lecturer without concerned teaching attitudes will have his students with thoughts of neglection towards the lesson and the subject.

b) Peers
In a few tutorial classes observed, there was no student participation; no student in the classes asked the teachers any questions regarding what was being taught in those lessons, making the teacher the only vocal person in the class; ultimately making the lesson atmosphere dry and dreary, since there was only listening and no conversation.

2) Influences/Distractions
Ø Peers
Observations in a few lecture classes have shown that students commonly skip classes with their close classmate friends. It is noted that it is always the same group of people who are absent in the class observed. Affirmation was provided from interviews with a certain group of class-skippers, saying that they sometimes skip a class to have longer lunchtime.

Ø Leisurely activities
For after-school leisurely activities where time is concerned (eg. catching a movie) students will skip classes to make time for their activities.

3) Inconvenience
a) Timetables
i. Long breaks
When interviewed, some students claim that the reason they skip their lessons is because their classes are not scheduled as effectively in their timetables as they would like them to be. Some students have two- to three-hour breaks in between their lessons, and they do not fancy the idea of waiting in school for hours for their next lesson, since they cannot go home during those breaks.

ii. Lessons too early and/or too late
Some students complain that they have too many lessons starting at 8am every week. Of these students, most of them have trouble waking up early (self-claimed). Students also complained having to attend school from 8am-5pm for some schooldays, claiming these are the ‘long days’ of the week, and because of that, it would be self-declaredly ‘excusable’ for them to skip some classes, most of the time either their 8am-10pm or 3-5pm class.

iii. Schooldays with only one lesson
In the third year cohorts’ timetables especially, there are a few certain days (typically Fridays) where they only have one class for the entire day, be it lecture or practical class. Because of this, students find it impractical to come to school only for two hours of one lesson, especially for those who live further away from the west-side of Singapore, and also those whose everyday-journey to school involves long tedious/tiring MRT train-rides or traffic jams.

b) After-school activities
i. Part-time jobs
A few interviewed students have random-hours part-time jobs on certain days.

4) Ignorance
From this study it is found out that some students skip the classes they cannot understand. They decide that they might as well not attend certain lectures which, in their opinion, they most likely would not be able to absorb anything out of. These might be a few reasons why they do not understand their lectures:

a) Lecturers not clear in explaining
i. Teaching pace too fast
Some students take a longer time comprehending complex concepts, ideas, techniques, workings and/or formulas.

ii. Incomprehensible accent
Some lecturers, especially engineering lecturers, have accents that are difficult to understand. In a certain interview with a 3rd year engineering student, he said that he and his classmates always skip one particular lecture class conducted by a China-accented lecturer, and together they would crash a different lecture of the same module with a different class every week.

b) Students not trying hard enough to concentrate

i. Some students admitted in their interviews that they do not understand their lecturers because they are not concentrating hard enough in their lectures in the first place. But they assure that when the time comes they will study whatever they are required to know on their own before their exams. Therefore skipping their classes is not a problem.

ii. Procrastination
Although these students do not understand their lectures and do not attend them, they still procrastinate learning what they were supposed to have learnt should they have gone to their lectures. This cycle of procrastination will only lead to ignorance of the particular module which lectures they keep skipping.

5) Self-assurance
Self-assurance is a trait some class-skippers have. A few interviewed students, who are relatively doing well in their studies so far, say that they only skip lessons, provided that they really know and understand what is going to be taught in the lecture. They will (or try to) ensure themselves that they will not be at a losing end ultimately.

DISCUSSION

From a social psychological point of view, the bigger part of the reason why students skip classes is due to their own characteristics, although the teaching environment in which they are, can be at fault to a smaller extent. Most students have small attention spans, and learning in a dry learning environment contributes greatly in shortening their attentiveness to the lesson. While one can argue distractions are everywhere and that it is just a matter of whether the student can overcome it or not, boredom acts as a great catalyst in aiding a student to succumb to the distractions in his present teaching environment, eventually boredom creates dislike of the student towards his/her lesson, ere go skipping it next time. While peers can be great motivators and tutors to students, they can also become distractions, and strong influences for students to skip their lessons. While school is the staple livelihood of students, students still have other things to do besides school, some of which for entertainment’s sake, others necessities. Either way students might skip class to attend to these activities. A student who is not good at a subject and yet is forced into learning it can be discouraging for him/herself, because students are generally averse to the subjects they dislike.

CONCLUSION

In order to provide the most effective solution to a problem, there is a need to understand the problem thoroughly. This applies for the case of Singapore Polytechnic students frequently skipping classes. From this study, five categories of psychological factors as to why students skip classes evolve. They are the categories of boredom, inconvenience, influences, ignorance and self-assurance which achieve the aims of avoidance of classes. This student-psychology study is especially important for teachers/lecturers so that they can better understand the thinking of their own class-skipping students thus remind them more effectively how important school must be to them, improve their teaching skills and maintenance of their teaching environment.

However, by doing this it might not be sufficient to solve the problem. A better solution to overcome this problem would be to build a long-lasting and good teacher-student relationship. Relationships are a critical component of learning. More often than not, the type of relationship students have with the teachers will indirectly affect their level of attendance during lessons. It is most likely the case that students will be motivated to attend lessons where they can interact and communicate effectively with people (teachers and fellow peers) whom they respect and feel comfortable with. With a good teacher-student relationship, the probability of students skipping lessons will be relatively smaller as they know their lessons would be enriching and fun.

A study on why students sleep during lectures.

2008-01-17T11:53:00.000+08:00

GROUP: NAMELESS

Title : A study on why students sleep during lectures.

Date : 11 January 2008, AY 2007/08, Semester 2
Conducted by : Koh Sihui, Leo Shumay, Jasmin Wong, Koh Shujuan, Heng Wei Jie, Melyssa Goh, Azzah

AIM OF STUDY
The aim of this study is to answer the main research question as below:

Why students sleep during lectures?

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS METHODS

This study employs a qualitative social-psychological research paradigm. The research is conducted online. The research takes a total of 9 weeks to complete. The research stretches from 1st November 2007 to 4th January 2008.

The forms of data collection for the research are as below:

We post a survey online and prompted our friends and people in a forum to participate in the survey. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=npYmzLP1ygMc2fHnoC6%2b40SWPS%2bA5Z8N%2fZPBSrhwAQY%3d

The forms of analysis used are as follow:
Noting relations between variables
Finding intervening variables
Clustering

FINDINGS
The findings for this research are as follows:

(A) The top three conditions and causes that make students fall asleep during lecture are as follows:

Lecturers are boring and dull
42/66 students
63.6%
Lecture is too boring and dry
48/66 students
72.7%
Usually sleep late
40/66
60.6%
(i) Lecture is too boring and dry
From the survey, it is shown that the main reason why most students fall asleep in lectures is because the content is too boring and dry. Students feel that they are unable to concentrate in the lecture because they have no interest in the lecture at all. Sometimes when the lecture is too boring, students feel that it won’t benefit them therefore they deliberately fall asleep in order to “put their time to good use, since most of them have a lack of sleep.”

(ii) Teacher is too boring and dull
Students find that lecturers that are boring and dull cause them to lose focus on the lecture because the teacher is unable to capture their attention. Therefore this leads to many students’ mind drifting away from what the lecturer is talking about. Students also tend to sleep in lectures because they feel that it is the only extra time for them to sleep and that they would not be caught by lecturers since there are so many students in a lecture hall.

(iii) Usually sleep late
Sleeping late is another cause of why students fall asleep in lectures. The lack of sleep makes students feel lethargic during boring lectures. The lack of sleep is mainly caused by late night mugging and late night gaming. The lecture being dry and the lecturer being boring further tempts students to fall asleep during lecture on top of the fact that students are already feeling tired.

(B) How students react to their friends falling asleep in lectures are as follows:

Nudging them only when teacher approaches
36/66
54.5%
Ignore them
30/66
45.5%
(i) Nudging them only when the teacher approaches
Most students only nudge their friends only when the teacher is approaching because they do not want to disturb their friends from resting because they know that their friends are tired. They feel that if they wake their friends up, the friend may feel irritated with them. They nudge their friends only when the lecturer is approaching to “save” them from being scolded by the lecturer.

(ii) Just let them be
Many people just ignore their friends and let them carry on sleeping because they can’t be bothered to wake them up or because they know that the teacher would not bother about their friend. Another reason is because they know that their friend cannot be bothered to learn about what the lecturer is teaching about, so they ignore them.

(C) How teachers react to students falling asleep in lecture are as follows:

Ask someone to wake them up
44/66
66.7%
Ignore them
37/66
56.1%
(i) Ask someone else to wake them up
Most lecturers ask friends to wake them up because it is the easiest and most convenient way to wake the person up since this way the teacher doesn’t have to do it personally. It would take too much trouble to do so.

(ii) Ignore them
Especially for university lecturers, they tend to ignore the students because they feel that the students are already matured enough to know when they should sleep and when they should not, so they can’t be bothered with students who fall asleep. Some lecturers just cannot be bothered with students who fall asleep during lectures because they feel that they are not showing respect to the lecturer and they do not have the drive to learn.

(D) How to prevent one from falling asleep in lectures are as follows:

Sleep earlier
47/66
71.2%
Stop procrastinating
35/66
53.0%
(i) Sleep earlier
From the survey, it has been found that sleeping early will enable students to stay more alert during lectures, hence bringing down the chances of them dozing off during lectures. This is because sleeping early allow students to feel more refresh and awake the next day.

(ii) Stop procrastinating
Procrastinating in this context, refers to stoning at home in the middle of the night doing nothing at all or doing unimportant stuffs like watching television, listening to radio, surfing the internet (not for studying purposes, but for leisure purposes), etc. Students feel that if they spent less time doing these redundant and unnecessary stuffs, they would have more time for their sleep which will in turn make them more alert during lectures.

(E) Do students consider sleep as important?

36.3% of those being surveyed feels that sleep is important, because ultimately humans do have to sleep. Whereas 30.3% of those being surveyed feel that sleep is VERY important to them.

However, although many students feel that sleep is of utmost importance, majority of them have less than 8 hours of sleep per day, which is essentially the recommended hours of sleep a person should get every day.

Most students feel that less than 8 hours of sleep per day is insufficient to last them through the whole of the next day, and that they would definitely fall asleep again the next day. Be it during lectures, tutorials or any free time that they have during travelling, etc. But most of them feel that they don’t have a choice because their body really cannot take the lack of sleep.

DISCUSSION
From our research we can tell that students have the tendency to sleep when they are attending a lesson that they are not interested in or listening to lecturers they do not like. This mentality can be and should be changed. They should understand that paying attention to lessons is beneficial to themselves. They should try to like the module and accept the lecturer’s way of teaching as all lecturers have different teaching style. Also, they should find a way to avoid sleeping during lectures in future rather than adopt a ‘why bother?’ attitude.

CONCLUSION
To prevent students sleeping during lectures, there is a need to study the mentality of students and the reason why they have this tendency to sleep during lectures. From this study, we found out that most students sleep less than 8 hours per day and thus, leading to higher possibility to doze off during lectures. Also, lack of interest in the module and/or boring lecturers further give themselves an excuse to allow themselves from dozing off. To add on to this, some lecturers also do not find a need to wake the students up. Fortunately, that is the minority. Majority of the lecturers still do bother to ask classmates to wake them up. From here, we can tell that the mindset of the students should be changed. They should be more keen towards learning. Interest towards the module can only be improved with positive mindset. Also, more sleep is required to keep the students alert at all times.

An exploratory study of how students deal with rejection.

2008-01-17T11:49:00.000+08:00

GROUP: HAPPIOLOGY

Title : An exploratory study of how students deal with rejection.

Date : 11th January 2008, AY 2007/08, Semester 2

Conducted by : Amelia Chung (0713847)
Alicia So (0645429)
Dawn Then (0745345)
Koo Li Yun (0738341)
Ling Rong Fa (0624367)
Hu Qui Ling (0735012)
Ter Teng Teng (0714794)
Noraien Jaini (0536099)
Valerie Tan (0764728)

Aim of the study
Our main aim of the study conducted was to the find out how youths deal with rejection in terms of interpersonal relationships. Ultimately, to further support the aim of the study, research questions posed by the group had to be answered.
The main research questions are as follows:
How do students respond to rejection? at first? Why?

Data Collection and Analysis Methods
After, we had conducted the interviews for our main and sub research questions, we obtained a wide collection of information. We have written data, videos and audios and these combine to give our interviews more credibility. Using the data collected, we did our analysis and reformatted the data, while maintaining its credibility. We analysed the data and used statistics to enhance our understanding of it. Besides that, we also categorised our data into two parts: the viewpoint of the rejecter and that of the rejected.

Findings
Data Analysis

Friends
Who/what did students seek refuge from after rejection?

Where did students obtain the courage to reject the other party?
Friends

Self-Reassurance
Themselves
Media
Others (e.g. food, retail therapy, sports)

Do the rejected parties still keep in contact with the rejecters?
Is rejection the best solution with regards to those who were the parties rejecting the other?
Yes
No-18%
No-50%

Discussion
Rejection is “the act or process of rejecting”, according to http://www.dictionary.com/ but to most of us, it is a sensitive issue that we fail to discuss regardless of whether we have been through it as the rejecter or the rejected. Why is that so? Most of us have been through various forms of rejection; the minor incidents (e.g. when you reject your friend when he/she asks you out) or major ones (e.g. you were rejected by your group of friends or rejection in the context of boy-girl relationships) or perhaps both for the unfortunate few. We have two options: to face up to rejection or to avoid it. The former requires a great amount of courage and perchance support from friends and/or family but will most probably enable one to get past the sorry state and move on, knowing that life is so much more than just rejection. The latter is sadly, what most people would do, regardless of what they say. The embarrassment of approaching the utmost sensitive topic of rejection and telling your loved ones of the entire episode may be too much to bear for some who choose to take the easy way out by forcing themselves to forget about it or to avoid thinking about it. Honestly ask yourself, is it possible to truly forget about the whole process of rejection simply by evading the issue? Absolutely not! This will give rise to a reverse effect and cause the parties involved to mull over the painful process with feelings of bitterness trapped in their hearts; not forgetting the resentment of the other party or even of oneself. We have conducted research to help people find better and more effective ways of moving on and getting over this agonizing process but ultimately, it is their choice to take it or to leave it.

Conclusion
Rejection is inevitable, regardless of how you may try to avoid or deny it. It is not about what we can do to prevent rejection, but how we can better cope with the aftermath of it that makes us a smarter and stronger person, maybe even wiser for some. Man has evolutionalised from the primitive caveman to today’s well-informed and educated individual who has access to the complicated technologies of today. Sadly, with all this knowledge, we have not been able to get in touch with our inner self and help improve our emotional state of health. Perhaps with all this globalization and rapid use of technology, we have even increased the pressure on our mental state of mind such that we have lost touch with ourselves and may not know who we truly are and the methods to rid ourselves of problems such as rejection. We hope to be able to tackle the problem of rejection whilst at a young age (schooling at educational institutes such as Singapore Polytechnic) and hopefully enable Singaporeans to have a stronger and more stable state of health.

An exploratory study of students treating Singapore Polytechnic T16 “white space” as a Gaming Hub instead of Study Hub.

2008-01-17T11:45:00.000+08:00

GROUP: HACHI NO ROUNIN

Title : An exploratory study of students treating Singapore Polytechnic T16
“white space” as a Gaming Hub instead of Study Hub.

Date : 11th January 2008, AY 2007/08, Semester 2

Conducted by :
Khoo Sin Yee (P0510929), You KaiFa (P0620545), Lai Wei Xian (P0656708), Ng Boon Choon (P0643878), Teo Yu Tian (P0749352), Woo Pi Chin Elvina (P0732853), Chin Ying Glenda (P0725015), Adilah Binte Mohamed Fadali (P0716332)

AIM OF STUDY
The aim of this study is to answer the main research question as below:
Why do students treat Singapore Polytechnic T16 “white space” as a gaming hub instead of a study hub?

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS METHODS
This study employs a qualitative social-psychological research paradigm. The research is conducted in Singapore Polytechnic. The various research subjects are interviewed and observed in different venues, such as T16 “white space” for the interviewing and observing of gaming and non-gaming students, School of Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering conference room for the interview of Head of Lecturer, as well as W1A for the interview of Estates officer. The research takes a total of nine weeks to complete. The research stretches from 16th November 2007 to 11th January 2008.

The forms of data collection for the research are as below:
a) Non-participant observation of the group of students in T16 “white space”, taking a total of two observation sessions of fifteen minutes each. An example of an observation in this study is shown in Appendix A.
b) Selected informal open-ended interviews of the various research subjects, which comprise of three groups of gaming students, three groups of non-gaming students, School of Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering Head of Lecturer, and Estates Department officer. We took an average of fifteen minutes for each interview. An example of an interview in this study is shown in Appendix B.

The forms of analysis used are as follow:
a) Open Coding.
b) Noting themes and patterns.
c) Noting relations between variables
d) Seeing plausibility
e) Finding intervening variables
f) Clustering.

FINDINGS
The findings for this research are as follows:
A) The 2 major groups of interviewees are the students and the School.
i) Students
a. Gamers.
The factors constituting students choosing to game at T16 “white space” are as follows:
· School of Electrical Electronic and Engineering (EEE) students
· School of Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering (MM) students
Through the interviews, distance, environment and cost are factors that gaming students take into consideration when choosing their place to game. Since majority of the gamers are from School of EEE and School of MM, they prefer to game at T16 instead of Moberly which is intended for gaming, as the distant is comparatively shorter. For the environment, air-conditioned place is more favourable due to the higher comfort level. Thus, from the limited choices of air-conditioned places in school available for access (Main Library, Moberly, T16 “white space”), T16 has appear to them as the most convenient place amongst all air-conditioned areas. This may be attributable to the nature of the library, where strict rules are imposed such as no making of loud noise is allowed. Thus, it makes much more sense for them to game at a place that is free from restrictions. In addition, the availability of the power plugs make T16 an even more attractive place to game, as it is observed that majority of the gamers rely on the laptop adaptor rather than the battery during their gaming period. The cost factor constitutes the main reason for gaming students for not patronising the LAN shop in Moberly. Gamers are required to make monetary payments on an hourly basis, and being students with limited pocket money, majority are unwilling to pay to game there when they can choose to play from their laptops without any charges.
· School of Media and Infocomm Technology (SMIT) students
For SMIT gamers who game at T16, they share the same mentality that T16 is convenient for meeting up with friends studying in the various schools before proceeding to the Dover MRT station. I infer that they do not game in their school areas much as it seemed to be more for studies’ purposes.
(The above findings answers the specific research question ‘Why of all places you choose to game at this place?’)

b. Non-Gamers
· School of Electrical Electronic and Engineering (EEE) students
· School of Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering (MM) students
· School of Media and Infocomm Technology (SMIT) students

Having known the reasons behind students treating T16 as a Gaming Hub instead of a Study Hub, we are also interested to find out the motivation behind non-gaming students continuing to study at the place in spite of the noise.

Despite the varying responses given by the non-students, the interviews revealed the common consensus that majority feel that the problem is not significant. Some choose to be ignorant to the surroundings, with the perception that they are unable to do much to control the noise level. A part of them feel that all places bound to have distractions, so focusing on individual work will divert their attention from the surroundings. Hence, they think that there is no pressing need to urge the gamers to leave the studying hub or reflect the issue to the school’s management for further actions. This may be attributable to the groupthink of students who have the common attitude of not bothering about others or standing up for their own rights. Another reason for students choosing to study at T16 is due to the comparatively more conducive area as compared to other areas in school. This may be as a result of the presence of air-conditioning, tables and wireless network needed for academic use. Thus, the need for proper facilities has overpowers their concerns regarding the noise level created by gaming students. Nevertheless, a minority feel that the gamers should be self-conscious by not creating noise that may possibly distracts students who are studying. As for SMIT non-gaming students, their usual study areas are School of Business library or SMIT basement areas. They are aware of the noise situation at T16, and thus feel that it is not a conducive place for studying.

ii) The School
The school has a part to play for managing the situation at T16. Interviews have also been conducted on the following two groups to find out the respective opinions on this issue.

a. Management
We have specified the management to be the Singapore Polytechnic Estates Department, as T16 is under the control of them. The objective of interviewing them is to understand their stance with regards to the situation at T16, and whether they have any plans to improve it. During the ten minute phone interview, the Estates Department Officer has repeatedly emphasized that they will take actions if students are disturbing the place. Nevertheless, he also feels that students should be treated as adults and be given the freedom to manage their own conduct. Thus, it is inferred that the school management is adopting a laid-back attitude towards managing students’ behaviours.
Please refer to Appendix C for the transcript of this interview.

b. Lecturers
Below depicts a fifteen minute interview with the School of Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering Head of lecturer. An interpretation of his replies is given on the right column.

Verbal

Interpretation
Interviewer
Is T16 under the management of School of MM?

Respondent
· “Management School of MM don’t manage the white space, although it’s located at Block 16.”
· “White space is a resource room. All resources in polytechnics are control by Estates.”
· “Blocks are managed by Estates but allocated to MM for timetabling.”
· “MM’s Management has got no control over it.”
He is clearly drawing a line on the responsibilities between Estate and School of MM. Probably because he is aware that our interviewing purpose is concern with the situation at “white space” and therefore is in a rush to clarify it right from the beginning of the interview.
Interviewer
So far has any student feedback to the School of MM?

Respondent
· “One of the students sent an email saying students are disturbing, making a lot of noise. MM Management quickly informed Estates, “Eh Estates, you must put up some reminders la, we cannot go there and –very difficult for us la—we cannot go there like policeman and ‘eh what are you doing there? You doing proper thing not? Don’t make noise,’ I mean, students see us they’ll keep quiet, you know,”
· “Cannot put security guard down there, so we call Estates to put up signs there. That’s the best they can do.”
He is illustrating that School of MM has play its part in dealing with the situation at “white space”. Probably wanting to let us know they have already contributed efforts but there is limited result. On the other hand, School of MM is perhaps afraid of playing the “bad guy” role and thereby straining the relationship with its students. Thus, issues concerning students’ discipline they will either “close one eye” or leave it to Estate to resolve it. Yet, they also understand that Estates could not help much in curbing the situation of students playing LAN games and making a lot of noise.
Interviewer
Has the school tried to do anything regarding the issue?

Respondent
· “We cannot do very much about personal actions. Not say cannot do very much…like if students feedback to us through emails, we can only put up posters.”
· “Other than that, if students chose to drink coffee, milo there, we cannot do very much unless students play football and others complain then we’ll call security guards down to check.”
School of MM has limited control over students’ personal actions like being inconsiderate and makes noise, play audio using loud speakers and not using headphones, using the area to play LAN games instead of studying.
Unless it is concern with serious matters or violating of school rules, they will not put its hands into disciplining the students.
Respondent
· “So far, we presume that students are making full use of white space. Have to make assumption what, correct…”
· “So far, in terms of rowdiness all that, it’s still alright. We have to assume certain norms and certain practices in Poly.”
He reiterated this point about assuming certain norms and practices of students. This further verifies that the school adopted a “close one eye” approach in students’ discipline. They assume students will follow the rules and therefore unwilling to bother much about it.
Respondent
· “Management really don’t have solution because they’re in the academic department.”

The truth is that the school’s management is in a difficult position in dealing with students’ behaviours, as their focus and responsibility is on academic.
Interviewer
What are some possible solutions you think is feasible to improve the situation?

Respondent
· “What we can do is maybe to suggest classing tutors, reminding students that when using white space there, it’s meant for study purposes; but how much would go into the students’ mind?”
· “Students have to be discipline and be more conscious about the environment.
· “The only way to cultivate these people is to be more conscious about their neighbour, we’re all in a community.”
· “Not easy to cultivate just by going to classes and preach.
· “Could be inherent in Character Development to teach students to be conscious about the community.”
He is providing some possible solutions to curb the situation, but on a later note realize himself that it is not exactly effective, as students tend to be defiant.
He felt that students should have the right attitude in behaving.
By being conscious about the environment- probably he is referring to by being considerate not to disturb others while in the stud zone.

One solution that on the academic department side they can help to play a part in.
·
· “You all observe yourselves la, hahahaha…I mean, don’t quote me la,”

Probably he is afraid of implicating himself into unnecessary problems and therefore repeated twice throughout the interview that we do not reveal his identity for whatever that was said.
·
· “I would say the situation at T16 is still manageable.”
· “Many times, suggests from students are more effective. Students’ feedbacks are very important.”
By now, he is summarizing his points.

Before he ended, he prompts us to voice out our concerns to the school through the feedback channels. Probably he understands that as lecturers they would not want implicate themselves into such complicating issues. Thus, students should stand out to improve the school situation.

B) Two categories of reactant behaviours employed by the students and the school evolve from this study. They are named as the categories of delusive behaviours and resistant behaviours respectively. The first part of research study answers the specific research question ‘How do the students feel upon the gamers breaching the rules and disturbing others who are genuine in studying?

i) Delusive Behaviour
Delusive behaviour is mainly categorized as self-deluding behaviours.

Self Deluding Behaviours
Refusal to be considerate
This section refers to gaming students, who predominantly are aware of the rules to oblige with when using the facilities in the study hub. The most basic one is to be conscious of the noise level, as the study hub is meant for studying purposes and silence is the foremost condition required for concentration. Some students are ignorant, and refuse to cooperate by lowering the sound produced from the laptop, or by using headphone while gaming. This has led to the rampant outspread of more students creating noise due to the diffusion of responsibility. They feel that given the considerable number of students gaming there, they have less faults and responsibility to be blamed for contributing to the noise level.
Gaming is for releasing stress
Majority of the gamers feel that gaming is a way to release stress from their school work and projects. Hence, they usually game after school or during breaks. In their opinion, “Studying must go with play, you can’t study without play.” It actually shows how that gaming to them is an enjoyment and a breather from their studies which is also why they show no qualms in gaming in T16.
Refusal to game at Moberly
Gamers have the choice to game at Moberly LAN shop, which is specifically intended to provide a form of relaxation for students after their stressful school hours. Yet, due to their laziness to walk the distance, they choose to game at their best convenience – T16.

ii) Resistant behaviours
Resistant behaviours are categorised into two groups – independent resistance and influencing resistance.

Independent Resistance
Refusal to take strict actions against gaming students
This section is referring to the school’s management, specifically Estates Department Officer who is in charge of T16. Given his personal responsibility, he should be ensuring that the school’s facilities are use for the right purpose. With students abusing the privileges of an air-conditioned study hub, he ought to impose stricter rules to curb the situation for the benefits of students who want to study there.

Influencing Resistance
Distractions creation
Some gaming students set out to create distractions in the study hub. They may make noise, talk to other gaming playmates, and play the sound out from their laptop at full volume to experience the thrill of the game. These activities usually disrupt the process of learning as required by non-gaming students, as concentration and silence are of utmost importance for studying.
Promoting overt non study activities
Such gaming students will try to influence their peers to adopt their stance for gaming. They try to influence other students to game at T16, or encourage them to participate in group playing even the self-exclaimed break times to release stress after studying. These moments are usually opportunistic where such gaming students make calculated moves of certain situations to achieve their aim.

DISCUSSION
Students, lecturers, estates officer
From a social psychological viewpoint, students choose to abuse the privileges of a conducive environment for studying in the “white space” because it has become a norm for students’ to game there. Given the increasing number of students who game there, there is diffusion of responsibility as it has become a groupthink among the gaming students that they are simply replicating what the rest are doing. The interviews revealed that students are aware of original intended purpose of the ‘white space’, which is a student study hub. However, due to the tremendous pressure and stress on students attributable to the presence of societal standards in the Singapore education system, students turn to the virtual worlds to release their stress. They game for purpose of releasing their stress after the intensive studying. Nevertheless, only a minority feel this way. Most of them choose to game at ‘white space’ due to the convenience of facilities needed for gaming (such as wireless, power points, air-conditioners). They feel that the ease of such facilities make it a prime location for gaming, as the room is comfortable and no monetary payment is required unlike gaming at Moberly Hub.

As for non-gaming students, some of them hold a prejudice view towards the gamers, with the perception that they are attributable to the noise level in the studying hub. This may not be true as a few considerate gamers actually use headphones while playing instead of projecting the sound out from the laptop. This has led to unsatisfied students creating negative unpleasant emotions in them, as they feel that the gamers are creating disturbance and occupying studying seats. In addition, they feel that the school’s management should not remain unconcerned as the situation may go beyond control should the gaming persists.

As for the lecturers, they have taken a bystander approach with regards to the issues at T16. This is especially evident as the interview with the School of Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering Head of Lecturer revealed that the school has chosen to leave it to the Estates Department to handle situations of students misusing the facilities at T16. Lecturers also presumed that persuasion will not attribute any effect to gaming students to stop their behaviours, and that explains the reason for lecturers to assume a group norm whereby students are presumed to be using the ‘white space’ for the right purpose.

We learnt that the Estates Department has tried to engage in strategies to counter the situation, such as by putting up signs to remind students that the ‘white space’ is a study hub. However, it seems to be ineffectual as students continue to game there.

CONCLUSION
In this study, we get to know about how the lecturers and managements look at the current polytechnic students; by treating them as young adults, and hence expecting them to behave in a manner that they should be. However, we also get to know that the polytechnic students may not think the same way as the lecturers and management. Hence, it is necessary in knowing the needs of the students, which allow the lecturers and managements to handle the matter more efficiently, and resolve or improve the current situation. Nevertheless, the students must also do their part by respecting the given rules and be more considerate and mindful. In summary, in order to provide the most effective solution to a problem, there is a need to understand the problem thoroughly.

An exploratory study of the behaviours of students who turn up late for lessons in Singapore Polytechnic.

2008-01-17T11:40:00.000+08:00

GROUP: FORTIS UNION

Title : An exploratory study of the behaviours of students who turn up late for lessons in Singapore Polytechnic.

Date : 9th January 2008, AY 2007/08, Semester 2
Conducted by :
Muhammad Rizwan Bin Radzali (0610890),
Goh MingRui Marie (0628118),
Ng Weijun Luke (0649618),
Gurubalan S/O Nadarajan (0746429),
Koh Yu Ling Eileen (0745709),
Ang Jingshi (0731641),
Ye Yun Hong (0661333),
Gabriel (0716639)
AIM OF STUDY

The aim of this study is to answer the main research question as below:

Why do many students in Singapore Polytechnic turn up late for lessons?

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS METHODS

This study employs a qualitative social-psychological research paradigm. The research is conducted in Singapore Polytechnic. The research takes a total of three weeks to complete. The research stretches from 14th November 2007 to 5th December 2007.

The forms of data collection for the research are as below:
a) Non participant observation of the twenty students in a class (first lesson of the day at 8am), taking a total of 4 observation sessions of 45 minutes each.
b) Selected informal open-ended interviews of the twenty students taking an average of 15 minutes per interviews.

The forms of analysis used are as follow:
a) Open Coding. Examples of open coding of an observation and interview are shown in Appendix C.
b) Noting relations between variables.
c) Clustering.

FINDINGS

The findings for this research are as follows:

a) The conditions and the causes that evoke students turning up late for lessons are as follows:

i) Types of lecturers
In this study, it is shown that unconcerned and uncaring lecturers always evoke late coming on the participants in this study. They feel that their lecturers do not bother about their punctuality in attending a lesson. When this happens, the students will tend to create a bad habit of constantly turning up late for lessons. Most of the students also would also expect the lecture given would be boring, thus they prefer to attend the lesson at a later time so that they will not doze off halfway through the lecture.

ii) Types of friends
Friends also play an important role which causes students to take the habit of turning up late for lessons lightly or even treating it as ‘part of life’ theory. This is especially so when they encounter friends who are usually late for lesson and behaving, as it is all right to be late, without having good or even proper reason to do so. These peers make them feel normal for being late and thus further normalizing their attitude for being late.

iii) Types of behaviour
Three categories of behaviours are employed by late coming students evolve from this study. They are named as the categories of procrastinating behaviours, delusive behaviours and resistant behaviours respectively in this study.

1) Procrastinating Behaviours
Procrastinating behaviours are subdivided into self-procrastinating behaviours and group procrastinating behaviours.

Self-procrastinating behaviours
Continue to be late for lessons
After apologising, a number of the late coming students will still carry on to be late over the semester. These may include waking up late, strolling to school, taking own sweet time before heading down to school, taking a longer bus ride even though its possible to access the shorter ones and went to buy breakfast or drinks before entering the class.

Group procrastinating behaviours
Deliberating coming late for lesson
On a number of occasions, especially within a group, they will tend to wait for one another at the train station or bus stop even though it is late. They will tend to go and get a bite or a drink before entering class. This is more frequent whenever, it is between lunch breaks or even short breaks in between lessons.

2) Delusive Behaviours

Self Deluding Behaviours
Refusal to admit errors
There are instances that the late coming students would be pointed out that some of the travelling time could be improved or even change. However, the late coming students will usually refuse to acknowledge it by refuting or ignoring them.

3) Resistant Behaviours
Resistant behaviours are categorised into two groups – independent resistance and influencing resistance.

Independent Resistance
Refusal to come early
When given a choice and chance to come early, road and time planned for the students, such students will not take it into consideration at all. They are also ready to take any admonishments or punishments meted out by the teacher.

Influencing Resistance
Resistance in Group
Some late coming students set out to just come late for class. They take effort to walk slowly, wait for all their classmates, go to buy food or drinks and go to toilet. These activities usually lengthen the process of being late.

CONCLUSION
In order to provide the most effective solution to a problem, there is a need to understand the problem thoroughly. This applies for the case of students turning up late for lessons in Singapore Polytechnic. From this study, we are able to analyse the main reasons why students turn up late for lesson and find solutions to eliminate this bad habit. Understanding such problems, lecturers can better understand the behaviours of their own students and give them proper advice. Students will also be more independent, responsible and discipline, and also understand that turning up for lessons punctually is a top priority to achieve good results. Researchers can use it as a platform to study other aspects of students’ behaviours too. Nevertheless, if the students, lecturers and researchers cannot see the significance of late coming and refuse to act on it, this study will remain a research article that serves the sole purpose of pleasure reading.

An exploratory studies of students’ action during the lunch break.

2008-01-17T11:36:00.000+08:00

GROUP: SADISTIC COWS

Title :An exploratory studies of students’ action during the lunch break.

Date : 3rd January 2008, AY 2007/08, Semester 2

Conducted by :
Muhammad Irwan B Ibrahim(0764450, DME/2B/06)
Boon Le Tang (0746825, DEEE/FT/1A23)
Sharifah Farah Bte Syed Esa Alsree (0654764, DBEN/2B/01)
Tan Shelmin (0734222, DIT/1b/04)
Lim Diana(0646008, DTRM04)
Liu Libin (0723576, DCP/1B/06)

AIM OF STUDY
The aim of this study is to answer the main research question as below:

Why do SP students always find difficulties in finding a place for their lunch?

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS METHODS
This study employs a qualitative social-psychological research paradigm. The research is conducted in Singapore Polytechnic. The research takes a total of four weeks to complete. The research stretches from 14th November 2007 to 5th December 2007.

The forms of data collection for the research are as below: ( the survey questions)
30 students have been interview by the researchers. Each of the researcher interviewED 5 students in certain foodcourts. The duration of each interview WAS approximately 10 minutes.

The forms of analysis used are as follow:
· Counting
· Clustering

FINDINGS (use diagrams or tables to supplement your report when needed)
The findings for this research are as follows:

Total person interviewed: 30

The distance is the main factor for student when determining which FCs to go for lunch. This is because there is insufficient time allocated for lunch. If they go to other foodcourts, much time will be spent on walking to the respective food courts. Nonetheless, when time permits, students do not mind walking to other food courts. They rather use the time to eat than to walk. They also prefer to go to foodcourts which are closer to their subsequent classes.
1) What are the features of foodcourts that attract you the most? (the foodcourt that you frequent go )
Number of participants
The Food
12
The distance
15
The features
3

From our interviews, we found that majority patrons of the food courts are students, but there are still some lecturers who have their meals in the foodcourts. Students occupy all the foodcourts mostly due to reasons such as distance and food. Furthermore, other reasons such as the availability of halal food in foodcourts play a role in students’ choice as well. Lecturers will dine in the foodcourts either nearest to their staffrooms or where their next class will be held. As lecturers have offices and can bring in their food, why would they not give up their seats to the students? The findings show that most of the students who cannot manage to find seats for their lunch will either starve themselves or end up buying take away food and eat at other places.

Total person interviewed: 30
2) Why do you refuse to go certain foodcourts?
Number of participants
The Distance
15
Limited choices for other races (Malays)
8
No seats
7

The students refuse to visit certain foodcourt mainly due to the distance apart, most of them will choose to go to the foodcourt nearest to their school. For example, students from the School of business will usually hang out at foodcourt 6. Another reason is due to the variety. When questioned, some of them prefer certain type of food that can only be found at certain foodcourt, for instance, thai food at foodcourt 4; koufu.

Total person interviewed: 30
3 When usually the peak hour?
Number of participants
11-1pm
8
12-1
22

From our interviewees, we found that most of them agree that the peak hour is from 12-1pm. Due to the fact that most lessons end at 12pm, only a minority of students will have an early lunch.

Total person interviewed: 30 (Some people prefer more than 1)
4 Which foodcourts is the most crowded? Why do you think students like to go there?
Number of participants
FC1
6
FC2
3
FC3
14
FC4
11
FC5
9
FC6
27

FC3 is the most crowded as it is located at the central of the school. It also has a wide variety of food to choose from. Furthermore, FC3 is also the biggest foodcourt in the school. Some students will go back to foodcourts which is nearer to them. They do not want to waste time walking.

Total person interviewed: 30
5 How usually you overcome this problem?
Number of participants
Wait
13
Takeaway
5
Don’t eat, stay hungry
12

From what we have observed from the data we got, most students are willing to wait for the tables and chairs. They are willing to come to class late as long their stomach is full. Only a few will take away because they find it easier. Some students disagree as it will be troublesome for them to eat from the packed food. Some of them are willing to go hungry as they do not want to wait for the places.
Total person interviewed: 30
6 Where will you go when there no place inside the foodcourt?
Number of participants
Study area
14
Staircase
3
Bench Area
8
Lecture Theatre
5

With this data we had, we observed student would likely to go to study area to enjoy their lunch. The reason is because there are enough tables and chairs for them to use. It is also more comfortable to use the area because it is open air in comparison to the stuffy foodcourts. This study area is also much closer to their classes after lunch so they do not have to waste time on walking. They also able to switch on their notebooks as they can easily find power plugs around. It is equivalent to killing two birds with one stone – Enjoying their lunch while surfing the internet.

Total person interviewed: 30
7 Would you consider bring food from home for lunch? Why?
Number of participants
Yes
3
No
27

Most students are against the idea of bringing home food as the food will turn cold by lunch time. While others find it troublesome as they do not want to carry too many things to school. Bringing home food will mean more things in the bag. Students also prefer to eat school food as it is better since there will be cleaners to clean up their used lunch plates. They also prefer warm food to cold food.

DISCUSSION
From our viewpoints, we analysed on how they will overcome the aforementioned problem in the polytechnic and the various reasons that culminated in the problem. Nowadays, students have many ways to overcome them. They fully utilise the facilities in the school including the stairs. In fact, they do not mind where they have their lunch as long as there is somewhere they can settle down for lunch. We have also enquired some friends from other polytechnics. It shows that not only SP students are facing this problem; other polytechnic students are also facing this problem during lunch time. Only a minority of them is willing to bring food from home or eat outside the school compound. The reasons are mainly clashes of time-table with similar break time and overcrowding of food courts when students swarm towards the food courts nearer to their classes. Hence, food courts near faculties that have a greater number of students are more likely to be crowded during lunch time.

An exploratory study on the presence of cliques within Singapore Polytechnic

2008-01-17T11:32:00.000+08:00

GROUP: SPLIT SECONDS

Title : An exploratory study on the presence of cliques within Singapore
Polytechnic.

Date: 7th November 2007 AY 2007/2008, Semester 2

Conducted by:
Chong Wenling (p0557036, DMTM/3A/24)
Wee Kellyn (p0727934, DDM/1B/03)
Jazreel Tan (p0646066, DTRM/2B/04)
Phua Yong Bing (p0743129, DOPT/1B/04)
Dila Bte Yazid (p0716275, DBT/1B/02)
Aisaruddin Bin Shamsuddin (p0747529, DEEE/1A/24)
Terrence Tan Wei Yang (p0658953, DIT/2A/22)
Xie Xiqing Gena (p0627469, DDM/2B/06)

AIM OF STUDY
This study aims to find out:
· Why are there cliques in Singapore Polytechnic?
· What are the factors that cause the formation of cliques?
· What are the pros and cons of having a clique?

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS METHODS
This study employs a qualitative social-psychological research paradigm. The research is conducted in a Singapore Polytechnic. The research takes a total of seven weeks to complete and it stretches from 7th November 2007 to 21st December 2007.

The forms of data collection for the research are as below:

FINDINGS
The findings for this research are as follows:

a) The ultimate definition of a “Clique” is mainly seen to be a group of friends hanging out together with a common interest. However, the definition differs with male and female counterparts. For the female, “Cliques” are a group of friends whom they can talk to openly and have a “common” interest which is mainly shopping which bonds will develop naturally. As for the male, their definition of a “Clique” is also a group of friends hanging out together and their term of “hanging out together” usually refers to soccer and whatnots.

b) Cliques often occur “naturally” based on the research done earlier. However there is other forms in which contributes to the occurrence of a clique. They are class outings (which leads to bonding and thus to the formation of clique), CCA (bonding) and the most interesting one, clubbing (mingling).

c) The necessity of having a “Clique” is said to be a YES. There are in total of 5 Yes’s and only 3 No’s. The main reason for a Yes is said to be that “everyone needs companionship”, “everybody need friends”, “better to have friends than being a loner”, “don’t fancy being a loner and bored to death”, “no clique, no fun”. However not All of them have the same mindset, some independent people begged to differ. Their reasons for a NO are, “We can have friends everywhere, therefore there’s not a need to actually be in a clique”, “it doesn’t harm to be alone”, “do not have to listen to other’s opinion”. There are those who chose between a No and a Yes as they all felt that it actually differs from people to people.

d) The factors that results to the formation of “Clique” are due to common interests and getting along well with one another. However there are some who agrees that popularity plays a major role in having cliques. Example, one of the member is a really known and popular person, others would want to join the clique in order to gain the same popularity standard as that of the “popular” therefore results to more others wanting to join the clique to be popular. Although this is not really a major issue here in Singapore as that in the western countries we see on the silver screen, the typical high school scenario.

e) The pros and cons of having a clique differs from person to person and the great difference can be seen between that of a male’s answer and that of a female’s. The majority pros of having a clique are, having companionships, having a supportive backbone, sharing problems. It is like having a secure feeling that there will always be someone whom will always be there in times of trouble and hardship and never being lonely. While the cons are, having the tendency of hanging out with the same group and getting too dependent to it; sticking to one clique, limited amount of friends, conflicts, disputes. Since having a clique means having to spend lots of time together, there will always be conflicts arising due to misunderstanding and whatnots, it is good to be having frequent time apart so as to minimise the disputes.

f) Based on the research done there will definitely be a smaller clique within a huge clique, say 10. The reasons given were, “Cliques that are big would have internal clique, and most probably lead to tension”, “Big cliques are hard to maintain, and only a matter of time they will split up”, “difficulty in communication”, “slight different clashing personalities”, “and Big groups cannot get along”. There was only one person who claims that having big groups won’t lead to a smaller group as they get along well as they tend to talk things through.

g) Being in a clique gives one a higher social status, based on our research most disagree with it however there are handfuls whom agrees. The reasons on disagreeing is that it is stupid to befriend someone just to make use oh him/her for the social status it thus shows that one is not sincerely a friend. The main reason for agreeing, “gives a sense of popularity” and this two scenarios, “we were the Popular girls and all of us became popular all because of one girl”, “like friend like macho2 one ah, then you also become macho automatically”

h) Based on the research, the ideal number of clique is 3 and having an ideal clique is having the ability to, “do things together and stay out together”, “can have fun together”, “Can communicate well”, “Common interest”, and “getting along well with one another”.

i) When asked one’s feeling if not be in a clique, many gave the same answer, “upset”. The reasons, “Left out because I need a strong sense of security and companionship, after all I came to poly to make friends”, “shows that people don’t like me”, “ Loner”. However there are others who felt nothing as they claimed that they don’t really care unless they have mutual friends having a clique is unnecessary.

j) Based on the research, 8 out of 10 people interviewed happened to be victims of being an outcast. The main reason to this are, “bad experiences on some occasion leads to bad impression”, “due to own character dislike by friends in the clique”, “they said I am weird”. A research was done based on the Virginia Tech Massacre and it was said that the murderer was a victim of being an outcast and that the massacre is the only way to get back at the people dishing him and he developed a great hatred toward everybody and thus it involves the killing of innocent people. The feelings felt by the used-to-be-outcasts, “crappy”, “angry”, “hatred”, “it is unfair that you just cut someone out for puny reasons, it is good to talk things out then to take drastic actions as to cut someone out like that”.

k) People with cliques still makes time for friends out of their cliques and thinks it is fine to be having and hanging out with mutual friend. The reasons are, “expand circle of friends”, “I do, but there would still be some things either party cannot share”, “certain interest might not be the same as the people in own clique”, “circle of friends do not revolve around the clique”, “socializing must still go on”. However there are some who do not socialize with those out of the clique, with reasons, “there will be a point when there is just no more topics to talk about and thus there will be an awkward silence making the situation even more embarrassing”

l) Rivalry between one clique and another is common. The reasons are, “different people have different perspectives”, “jealously over popularity”, “disputes”, “Influence; due to one person in our clique has dispute with another person in another clique”

m) Welcoming peers into a clique may be a little hard for the new comer and they might somehow feel a little left out within the first few days in the clique. The clique members are open with welcoming new “members” with reasons such as “The more the merrier”, however some are not. The reasons are, “I would prefer to not accommodate to them” and “it’s hard to start over”.

From the above findings, the conditions and causes that cause students to form their own cliques are as follows:
· Actions done by individual
It is shown that what the individual do will determine the acceptance by the clique. The individual will try to do his/her best to please the already formed clique. It is to make sure he/she gain the acceptance of the clique.

· The peers
Peers also play an important part. The acceptance of the individual into the clique will be determined by the members of the clique who are the peers.

· Situations
If the clique is newly formed and is seeking members, the individual will automatically be accepted when he/she hangs out with the group from time to time

DISCUSSION
From the research and data collection, we can see different personalities of a person, such as the confidence and the fear of being alone. During the interview, the “ATTITUDE” is shown, that are the affective component (emotional reactions to the attitude object), the cognitive component (thoughts or beliefs about the attitude object) and the behavioural component (actions towards the attitude object).

Human beings are relationship oriented. And we cannot survive alone without having relationships. Some may say they need company; some need confidence, some need attention, and some need security thus resulting people to go find company. And cliques are there to help ease those “problems.”

The results differ from male and female. Females tend to be more dominant and would rather have a smaller clique which is easier to maintain. But males tend to be friendlier and more welcoming towards a bigger clique.

Due to the fact that they have more time to interact with each other, there is a higher chance that miscommunications and misunderstandings will surface. This is because different people have different perspectives under different situations. This might also be one of the reasons why females rather keep a smaller and easier to maintain clique. The males however might not even put this dispute as their setback to seek a bigger clique as males are often described as ‘social animals’.

CONCLUSION

“Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.” So would you rather stay alone or stick as a group?

Cliques have always been in our lives, as long as you would to have a big group of people (e.g. a company or a school as long as there is a social interaction), cliques are bound to be formed. Cliques are an exclusive group of people who normally share either their social status, the type of interests or even similar personalities etc. Cliques can be the beginning of a long lasting friendship or just another part of the social circle that you would just consider as acquaintances.

Cliques are also known as reference groups. A reference group can be comparative or normative. A normative clique or reference group is the source of values and beliefs for each individual. The comparative clique or reference group is a standard of comparison by which the individual evaluates himself as well as others.

The effects of being in a clique can be positive or negative. Inclusion in a clique gives an individual a type of peer acceptance, however, a clique can hinder peer acceptance and damage an individual’s self-image and self-confidence.

A study of phenomenon of students waiting for their friends at the MRT station before attending classes in Singapore Polytechnic.

2008-01-17T11:01:00.000+08:00

GROUP : MONKEY BUSINESS I

Title : A study of phenomenon of students waiting for their friends at the MRT station before attending classes in Singapore Polytechnic.

Date : 9th January 2008, AY 2007/08, Semester 2
Conducted by :
Tsang Xian Jun Timothy (P0710563, DARE/FT/1A/21)
Teo shun bin louis (p0611367, DASE/FT/2B/21)
Seah Yang Ling (p0717218, DBA/1B/09)
Boon Le Wei (p0628192, DEEE/2A/23)
Darren Foong (p0731766, DISM/1B/02)
Alicia Low Su Ru (p0745767, DTRM/1B/05)
Asyikin (p0651844)
Xing Fang (p0758147)

AIM OF STUDY
The aim of this study is to answer the main research question as below:
Why do students gather in dispersed groups at the MRT control station to wait for their friends before attending classes?

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS METHODS

This study employs a qualitative social-psychological research paradigm. The research is conducted in a polytechnic in the western part of Singapore. The research takes a total of six weeks to complete. The research stretches from 13th July 2007 to 1st September 2007.

FINDINGS (use diagrams or tables to supplement your report when needed)
The findings for this research are as follows:
a) How long are they willing to wait? (5 minutes before lessons start? or until friends come?)

From the survey we did, we realized that most people will wait till their friends arrived. We calculated that the average waiting time is 30 to 50 minutes. All of the replies we got showed that they would wait for their friends for at least 15 minutes. From the replies, we concluded that some people fear to be alone as they will try to wait for their friends so that they can walk to school together without having the said fear.

b) Who are they waiting for? (classmates, boyfriend/girlfriend...)

From the survey we did, we realised that most of the students at MRT stations are waiting for their friends. There are also cases where they wait for their cliques, club friends, boyfriend/girlfriend, secondary school friends, gems friends and friends. From the survey, we assumed that students wait for the classmates so that they can go for lessons together.

c) How big is the group usually?

From the quantitative data we have attained, the most common number of people that forms a group is made up of four. Upon further analysis, it is discovered that even figures such as duet, quartet and six people form a waiting group easily more than odd figures. In general, the number of people formed in waiting groups is in even numbers.

d) What are they doing while they are waiting?

From the survey, we realised that most of the people do simple things like listening to music and chit-chat. We assume that they do things that do not require much thought and are just done to simply pass time.

e) Why they can’t be more independent – going lessons on their own?

Through the interview of several people who are usually seen waiting for people at the MRT stations, we found out that there are several attributions to their willingness to wait for their friends. Firstly, they feel that since their friends waited for them when they were late, they should reciprocate by waiting for late friends. Some of them find the company of their friends much coveted. Several of them feel that they can afford to be late since the lessons usually do not start at the stipulated time. Hence, we can deduce that peer influence is the underlying reason as to why these people cannot be only independent. They desire a strong sense of belonging to their cliques and feel that it is a daunting task to go to lessons on their own.

f) Why risk being late? (if they are going to wait till their friends come, regardless of whether they would be late)

Based on the survey conducted, results have shown that students do not show much concern for their academic work, often putting “Friendship” as a more pressing and important issue. Students think that the polytechnic do not enforce strict policies on attendance and as such took advantage of that knowledge.

g) What are they thinking while waiting?

We have noted that most students would think of what time their friends would arrive, possibly due to annoyance of having to wait. Others would think of lunch later that day whereas a small minority would just daydream or think of nothing. Another minority would think of what to do when they get home.

h) What are their emotions and behaviour while waiting?

Based on the results of our survey, we found that most of them are not exactly fond of having to wait for their friends. Some were even frustrated, but they still wait anyway. This shows how much humans, especially teenagers, yearn for company. They may also be reluctant to wait, but do not have the courage to voice out their unhappiness for fear of being viewed by others as being selfish and impatient.

DISCUSSION
Through the findings, we can see that students tend to feel the need to develop friendship with their cliques (need for affiliation). They think that they should reciprocate the kindness of their friends by waiting for each other before going to lessons together (group norms). They feel that there is a need to wait for each other as none of them initiate the idea to proceed on to lessons without waiting for their friends who are late. (conformity). The last reason why students are willing to wait for their friends who will be late is peer pressure. They feel the need to form into groups as they feel more at ease in their usual hangout groups (cohesiveness).

CONCLUSION
Thus, from this study, we are able to find out the underlying reasons why students are willing to wait for one another at the MRT stations. Students are generally dependant upon their friends and they feel the need to ingratiate with them. The ubiquitous peer influence has inevitably created the fallacy that they should wait for each other to improve their friendship. Generally, most of them feel that being late for lessons is a trivial matter. They place friendship at a higher priority than being punctual for lessons. This is probably due to their huge desire to forge a strong sense of belonging to a group in which they feel comfortable in. They do not wish to be alone and yearn for company. Thus, we can infer that peer pressure and a deep desire to integrate into a group are the reasons which will explain the phenomenon apparent in the Dover MRT station.

A study on the growth pattern of different types of CCA categories in Singapore Polytechnic (SP) and behaviour of students towards the CCA system

2008-01-17T10:56:00.000+08:00

GROUP: THE CURIOUS

Title : A study on the growth pattern of different types of CCA categories in Singapore Polytechnic (SP) and behaviour of students towards the CCA system

Date : 9 January 2008, AY 2007/2008, Semester 2
Conducted by : Joseph Min Yi P0723349, DCP/1B/01
Wong Tze Hong James P0617417, DBA/2B/11
Jessica Tan Min Hui P0652113, DCHE/2B/02
Teo Serene P0712169, DASE/1A/24
Sartesh Pradeep P0746429, DEEE/1B/09
Nur Qurratuaini Bte Mohd Zuhri P0733081, DIT/1B/04
Teo Yilin Kelly P0763587, DCP/1B/01
Ng Si Leng P0645643, DTRM/2B/04

AIM OF STUDY
The aim of this study is to answer the main research question as below:
Why are some categories of CCAs in SP more popular than others?

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS METHODS
This study of Sports CCA popularity in SP had its approach made from a qualitative social-psychological perspective. The target sampling was selected from SP students only. All the information used for this paper was obtained from both primary and secondary data, i.e. the former served to identify a student’s level of awareness, motivation as well as their attitudes towards participating in sports CCAs relative to other CCA alternatives. Secondary sources would basically comprise of related internet resources such as web articles, personal recounts, speeches, of which extracts would be exhibited in Appendix D.

We employed the survey research method compared to qualitative means like focus group discussions and observational techniques. In particular, it was applied via an online survey using a virtual survey website known as SurveyMonkey. This particular website contained the suitable functions and capabilities to design typical surveys for diversified types of research disciplines.

An alternative of the preceding method was done through personal interviewing, in which students were randomly selected at a certain location to participate in the survey. The research took approximately a total of four weeks to complete, which involved checking and observing the progress of the survey responses as they were being updated online on a regular basis. The research stretched from 13 November 2007 to 10 December 2007, after which the results were tabulated and analysed in the next few following sections of this paper.

The forms of data collection for the research were as follows:
a) The respondents selected were mainly second-year students because of a handful of reasons. Firstly, this group of students were perceived to be more representative of the Polytechnic’s population, since most of them already have adopted specific CCAs during their first year, and probably possess a year of experience for answering the questions in a more balanced and comprehensive manner. The second reason arose from the fact that the email addresses of all second-year students could only be obtained via authorized means while those belonging to other students of different academic year were unable to be obtained.

b) It was considered that higher-year students (seniors) should also be included in the target sampling of this survey research, but the majority would naturally be busy preparing for their graduation examinations, which could be less receptive in checking their mailboxes. As much as they were also highly sought after for participation, the situational circumstances were not permissive of such increase in response rates.

c) There were a total of 418 students, of which 387 were sent through email links of second-year students. Of these figures, 31 had submitted their responses via a mixture of 24 online submissions and 7 hard copies.

d) There were no informal close-ended interviews for the purpose of this research project, as open-ended questions were used throughout the online questionnaire, as mentioned earlier.

Statistical procedures for analysing the survey questions was only possible for one specific question, which enquired about the willingness of students to join any desired category of CCA (see Appendix A). Frequency counting was most suitable, but similar mathematical methods were unfeasible for qualitative analyses of the remaining research findings.

There was a variety of methods which could be used for analysing socio-psychological research studies, and even though all accessible methods need not be employed, we had managed to utilise almost all to give a wide-ranging viewpoint of the issue on sports CCAs’ popularity in SP. The main descriptions and explanations for some of the significant analysis methods were indicated and elaborated to suit the context of this report. Note that the order of the methods was not chronological, i.e. they did not correspond with the flow of question numbers and the analysis under ‘Findings’. The rest of the methods would be indicated under their relevant headings.

The forms/strategies of analysis used were as follows:

a) Open Coding-where appropriate
This was not made in an observational characteristic. The reason was that the bulk of the responses received were amassed in an intangible form, i.e. there was no direct watching of respondents filling up their thoughts through the use of computers. Thus, the interpretation of open coding might be meaningfully changed into minimal transcriptions of selected participants’ answers. Such an approach would be more productive where longer length of responses per survey submission was accomplished.

b) Noting themes and patterns-Q10
When a question invites similar responses under logical conditions, there would bound to be common areas to the scope of answers, normally in repetitive occurrences. The identification of these responses allowed a more superficial understanding of respondents’ thoughts and perceptions of the topic, before other methods came into play for a deeper look.

c) Seeing plausibility-Q1
Answers to a specific question might be different, but if each has their own stand, and that both sides could be interrelated when necessary, they would still make sense.

d) Clustering-Q1
e) Counting-Q2 and Q7
f) Making contrasts/comparisons-Q3
g) Partitioning variables-Q9
h) Subsuming particulars into general-Q5
i) Factoring-Q8
j) Noting relations between variables-Q4
k) Partitioning variables-Q6
Classification of responses for certain questions in the survey are provided in the form of charts and tables in Appendix C.

FINDINGS
Popularity of Sports CCAs in SP
Analysis methods: Matrix cluster and seeing plausibility

SP has implemented the Sports Elective Programme (SEP) few years ago, which also had a degree of impact in enhancing the popularity of sports as compared to the Student Personal Development Programme (SPDP), which consists of other varieties of recreational activities. Though specific statistics were absent, the experience related by one of the respondents was that SEP offers a wide range of sports selections, e.g. jogging and rock climbing conducted on a weekly basis over a period of eight weeks. This allowed a higher chance of developing the applicants’ interests in sports exercises compared to SPDP’s training sessions lasting only approximately two weeks.

There was an external survey with statistics compiled by Singaporean researchers regarding physical activity patterns of Singaporeans. This information was collected to give a better understanding of the general sports situation in Singapore, particularly how often people tend to exercise over a certain period of time. It allowed us to discover the trends of local sporting lifestyles.

Factors affecting Sports CCAs membership

Analysis method: Counting

The reasons for influencing the decisions of students whether to engage in sports CCAs were primarily classified under two groups, i.e. peer pressure and interest. Their ultimate choice relies either on their individual reasoning, or under interpersonal affections. This analysis method is possible when the supporting reasons were not extensive enough, but rather, judged by general responses to lead to numerical counting.

2.1 Peer pressure
There is one specific theory to justify such a truth, which is social identity theory. Friends resort to such pressure tactics by encouraging their counterparts to seek to enhance their self-esteem by identifying with specific groups and perceiving them as being relatively superior. Having ‘accessible rights’ to exploit a membership is a form of outward expression, which allows some scale of liberalisation to exercise mutual influence towards those who have the criteria to belong to a certain group (Tan, 2006). It seemed reasonable that the attribution theory was applicable, which describes the way in which people explain the causes of their own and other people’s behaviour. The more the number of people associated with the group, the stronger the conviction and persuasive efforts to invoke others’ interests in joining them.

2.2 Personal qualities
Individual interests are often imbued since young, and as their characteristics change, the perception of new interests also settle in, either adding on to, or even replacing their existing ones. As a result of unique personalities, the realistic conflict theory tells us about the idea that limited resources will lead to conflict between groups and result in prejudice and discrimination. For instance, a student might assume and perceive himself as superior to another in a certain CCA in areas of wealth and skills, but due to his lack of actual background knowledge of the latter, he could easily display narrow-mindedness.

Favouritism against certain CCAs
Analysis method: Making contrasts/comparisons
For the question of investigating the presence of favouritism for certain CCAs, there could be a few types of orientations experienced by different respondents, e.g. there were both social and resistance orientation present in the broad category of the responses. In addition, the type of contrasts could even exist within the responses of ‘yeses’, since a very small percentage of the survey participants disagreed with the presence of cronyism in a CCA. Hence, the focal point will be finding out the extent of differences among those who replied ‘yes’, but with the support of their reasoning in diverse manners.

3.1 Social orientation
Students tend to display a relatively strong social need to be with their friends not only for companionship, but perhaps for better and convenient approach to an age group similar to themselves. It was quoted that students tend to form their own cliques, i.e. they select friends based on a set of criteria which will be favourable to themselves (snowman_emily, 2007). Added with a possible reality that teenagers will want to have strong relationships established during their youthful age, such motives will prepare them for working life where mingling with clients require intense and effective interaction skills. This is where the social comparison theory can be applied, which reinforces the idea that people learn about their own abilities and attitudes by comparing themselves to others. From external sources, the ‘social network’ concept goes further to explain the difference between friends made in CCAs and classmates, whom the latter is considered ‘hi-bye’ friends with no long-lasting relationships (YounGunz, 2007). Nevertheless, this is a subjective point of view which will warrant a more thorough investigation in relation to the quality or durability of friendships shaped under different contexts.

3.2 Financial stability of CCAs
Another perspective gathered from those who agreed that some form of discrimination prevailed within a specific CCA could be in a practical sense, such that the respondent felt more reassured when the CCA’s operations have sufficient funds for various events like organising important, large-scale programmes where costs would be high. Those who contribute more money for the CCA’s administrative and other functional purposes may be perceived to be more well-respected than others, besides boasting a self-image of wealth. Such thinking can be considered as part of the distinctiveness theory, which suggests that individuals perceive themselves in terms of those attributes that make them different. It is analogous to a company which has a relatively strong annual financial performance, thus attracting more investors and prospects to invest in it. This would be translated into more generous funding from the polytechnic as it continued to earn more valuable awards per unique event (otw_89, 2007).

3.3 Support for greater CCA popularity
Another respondent had similar sentiments which seemed to be the case when a particular CCA becomes popular, it will probably sustain a reasonably high chance of being entitled to more overall support, including subsidies from the school. Yet another also reflected along this idea that ‘preferential treatment’ will be showered by certain groups of people like lecturers compared to other less-welcoming CCAs (parthibanr, 2007). This goes to prove a realistic truth that popularity in terms of monetary backgrounds and selective endorsements by teaching staff may affect a CCA’s destiny.

3.4 Degree of members’ involvement
On an objective side of those who answered ‘yes’, one participant was mentioned as saying that the ‘liveliness’ of a particular CCA can be evaluated based on the quantity and scope of activities being conducted for a selected period of time. However, this viewpoint was likely from an ‘activist’ in being continuously active for a specific CCA which he has keen interest. Such people are considered CCA loyalists, where they may chip in superior efforts in ensuring that not only do they want to see an improvement in the CCA’s running, but also satisfy their personal needs and wants (Loo, 2007). From the size of membership in a CCA, the social impact theory demonstrates that the idea which conforms to social influence depends on the strength of the group’s importance, its immediacy and the number of people in the group. The more members a CCA has, the stronger the impact of the group (club). As evidence from CCA.sg shows, an example of a CCA being widely discussed is animation club in SP. The forum allows both members and non-members to assess and express vested comments regarding the knowledge of anime, depending on the focus of which aspects of anime they often centralise in. Activities need not be exhaustive, so a CCA can employ a variety of programmes to motivate and develop its members’ well-being, e.g. combining and rotating certain types of work periodically, as seen in the probable mix of forums and competitions for anime club members (Lim, 2007).

3.5 Internal affairs
A CCA may play ‘office politics’, be it aggressive or mild. This occurs prevalently on members who hold exclusive positions or have special areas of contribution to the CCA which are hard to come by, thereby getting an above-average level of attention from its counterparts, e.g. juniors. The latter, oblivious to the CCA ‘behind the scene’, will be more easily influenced by word-of-mouth remarks, in this case, their seniors (Kim, 2007). Such a reality might be in accordance to the social dominance theory, i.e. societal groups (in this case, a CCA’s members) can be organised in a power hierarchy in which the dominant groups (club committee) enjoy a disproportionate share of the society’s (club’s) assets and the subordinates (ordinary members) receive most of the liabilities (club cleaning and petty funds provision). This problem is thought to be solved and only resolved when a member becomes part of the committee to truly understand the ‘full picture’, since seeing is believing. It has been studied that a person’s true colour will reveal when he communicates and behaves in a certain way towards familiar people. ‘CCA politics’ tend to occur just like how a president will run for his next term of presidency during upcoming elections via gaining firm support by issuing attractive, last-minute incentives. In CCAs, the severity of the situation may not be the same as real-life politics, but where relationships are concerned, almost anything can happen, even to the extent of stripping a person’s title in a sudden turn of events due to below-standards performance in managing the club well, as well as implicated by bad publicity in the campus or CCA itself (Toh, 2007). Such an ugly truth might stem from the social exchange theory, which describes the idea that people will seek out and maintain relationships in which the rewards exceed the costs, in terms of self-fame and ‘upper-class association’ with the seniors in the CCA.

3.6 Resistance orientation
Conformity can be a variation of resistance orientation, in which a member tries to steer clear of ‘formal group dynamics’ to avoid trouble. The bottomline is that such acts of ‘untrained governance’ will easily backfire and unintentionally inflict souring ties at a tender age (Sim, 2007). Every type of CCA needs to have some form of ethics e.g. in sports CCA, the chairperson has to make sure that all his members are always up and running not only getting engaged actively in training sessions, but also show due respect when necessary, such as facing a foul in soccer and compromising on the seriousness of the fault. The distraction-conflict theory might hold, i.e. the presence of others (popular figures) is a source of distraction that leads to conflicts in attention between an audience (prospective members) and a task that affects performance (selecting the right CCA). Some students detest favouritism; if it is practised and preached in a certain CCA, they shun from it, including avoiding the members associated with it.

3.7 Disagreement of presence of favouritism
This group of students may happen to be involved in the operations of the particular CCA they join, and everything looks peaceful and smooth-sailing. There could be other reasons, i.e. their attendance records may be poor, probably caused by personality factors like laziness to attend the weekly practices or meetings, joining for the basic sake of earning CCA points the easy way. Furthermore, it is logical to consider their mounting academic workload, depending on their specialisation. From looks, they may tend to be easy-going and flexible in complying with instructions from the upper level. For instance, using the soccer sport CCA, the leader may order X to carry a basket of soccer balls out to the field, and there are no qualms. X may be displaying his personality of an ‘anything’ mindset, or that he seems to be a ‘law-abiding’ citizen, such that the willingness to perform requests is naturally within him.

3.8 Uncertainty of presence of favouritism
Some of the explanations were seen to be a feeling of indifference or neutrality towards the ‘domestic affairs of the household’. Such thoughts can be implied to show conservatism, i.e. they chose to remain silent for fear of being implicated with future-related issues. Nonetheless, the reality that they did not have sufficient information and background knowledge about CCAs and the system should never be dismissed in an unconscious attitude. If this survey were quantitative, excluding the responses of ‘don’t know’ will result in data loss and less useful understanding of the real circumstances embattling certain CCAs (Joe, 2007). One participant had substantiated his reaction of not being proactive in the CCAs he engaged in, some do not have any CCAs. Take the example of sports CCAs, consistence and patience, together with perseverance, can enable individual members to exercise their energy under mutual affections of such behaviour, which may lead to better performance during matches and competitions via binding teamwork.

3.9 Membership under favouritism
If favouritism goes to the hands of the majority in a particular CCA, which brings up its popularity, then this is indeed an inflated perception of the CCA in front of potential members during CCA Drives. Cross-checking with question one, in the case of sports CCAs, when a new member gradually realises the truth that training sessions tend to be replaced with internal or non-physical activities, the objectives of him signing up for it initially were not only screwed, but also leave him to generalise sports CCAs are ‘unclean’ CCAs, which certainly prove disastrous in future recruitments of ‘new blood’ for different sports. Favouritism though seems superficially pleasant, will invite long-term criticisms by prospects and may spark off a total drop of memberships throughout other categories of CCAs.

DISCUSSION
From what we see, peer pressure is the main reason affecting students’ choice of CCA. Students may join a CCA not because of interest, but just because their friends are there. This phenomenon arises due to the social identity theory, which is the idea that people seek to enhance their self-esteem by identifying with specific groups and perceiving these groups as being better than other groups. For example, inactive participation in the CCA will make them feel left out if they do not do the same things as their group of friends. Hence in a way, the presence of friends “forces” them to join a particular CCA.

Other social issues we see are that students feel the need to know more friends. They realise the importance of social network as it makes them look popular and in turn give them some confidence. They can also at the same time build up their socialising skills which is important for them when they work in the society e.g. mingling with clients. Therefore, joining a CCA which already has many members is portrayed as a “ready-made” social network, only waiting for you to join in. On the other hand, joining a CCA with only very little members inside would mean that you have to start everything from scratch. Asking for more members, promoting your CCA to others and finally expand to a CCA which is popular in the school; isn’t that too much of a hassle? Obviously one would go for the popular one.

Not only so, popular CCAs tend to come with more benefits. They tend to receive more support from SP in aspects of funding and also support when events are organised (The number of people who turned up for event). This would definitely make one feel more secured and confident. Some other personal reasons as to why students choose that particular CCA would be due to time, CCA points and interests.

CONCLUSION
In conclusion from what we can see is that, CCAs is one of the important factors in a school that is needed to be taken into account, as it is an important part of SP itself. Therefore, it is important to some of the students too. To solve any problems that arise regarding CCAs, for example on how the growth of each different CCAs can varies from each other, there should be at least one person in each and every CCA to be aware on what is the main catch that students are looking for. This is so as to make the unpopular CCAs achieve a greater understanding on why they have such a low popularity rate. They should be well-aware that there are many various possible reasons why students join a particular CCA. Thus, they need to study on what the ‘in-thing’ is that presently attracts students. By doing some research, they will be able to maintain the good standards of CCAs in SP such that terminating existing CCAs due to unpopularity will never be the solution to the problem. The contents of this report will appeal to the readership of teachers and the relevant personnel in getting a sense of consciousness towards the fluctuating situations happening within the different CCA categories. By reading it, students can also truly discover the benefits and opportunities of CCA events in allowing them to unleash their potential abilities, thereby contributing to the unique levels of popularity of each CCA category.

An exploratory study of behaviours after meals in a food court in Singapore Polytechnic.

2008-01-17T10:48:00.000+08:00

GROUP: MONKEY BUSINESS II

Title : An exploratory study of behaviours after meals in a food court in Singapore Polytechnic.

Date : 3rd January 2008, AY 2007/08, Semester 2
Conducted by : Ong Zhi Xiang Jonathan/0715609
Tan Yi Xun/0725578
Lai Chunyuan/0505394
Ng Shu Ting / 0645870
Liuxuyang/0662488
Ngoh Yi Rui/0620334
Tan Chin Hang/0748913
Peh Si Hui/0737618
Dominic Chong/ 0629289

AIM OF STUDY

The aim of this study is to answer the main research question as below:
Why is there a failure to clear plates after eating in food court in Singapore Polytechnic?

DATA COLLECTION AND METHODS

This study employs a qualitative social-psychological research paradigm. The research is conducted in a food court at Singapore Polytechnic. The research takes a total of three weeks to complete. The research stretches from 15th October 2007 to 7th December 2007.

The forms of data collection for the research are as below:

30 survey forms were given and completed by 30 different people eating at a food court in Singapore Polytechnic over a period of 3 weeks.

The same 30 people chosen were also being interviewed by us, with each interview lasting around 5 minutes.

FINDINGS

The analysis will compartmentalize the participants’ responses to the stipulated interview questions into categories.

Interview Questions

Why do you clear your plates/don’t clear your plates?

8 people feel that it is everyone’s responsibility and also their integrity.
7 people feel that they are lazy and it is a chore to clear their plates.
7 people feel that it is the cleaners’ responsibility to clean up for us.

If there are no cleaners to clear you plates, will you return the plates?

Some of them feel that it is their own responsibility to do so.
Can’t be bothered to do so.
Some could be due to rushing of time.
Only if there are no cleaners around.

How often do you clear your plates after eating?

6 of them would always do so because of their integrity.
12 of them feel they would only do it when it is needed.
16 of them just cannot be bothered to clear.
1 person says that he/she would only clear if he/she is not rushing for time.

Do you think it is important for us to practice the habit of clearing our plates after eating?

Some feels that is a good habit to practice.
Feels that it is not their responsibility.
Peer influence can make them not clear their plates.
It is their responsibility to clear their plates after enjoying their meals.

Some of them feel that they should give the cleaners a chance to do their job.

If you don’t clear your plates, do you think it is a waste of time to clear your plates?

7 people feel that they are lazy and it is a chore to clear their plates.
12 people feel that it is everyone’s responsibility and also their integrity.
5 people feel that it is the cleaners’ responsibility to clean up for us.
6 people feel that they have been taught from young.

If you don’t clear your plates, how would you feel it you are a visitor of the school?

Cannot be bothered
Feels that it is nothing out of the box
Bad impression

If you don’t clear your plates, but your friend did otherwise, how would you feel?

Guilty
Can’t be bothered
Ask others to help
Follow the others and clear as well

If you don’t clear your plates, would you feel bad after the cleaners clear up your table?

Some of them would feel guilty.
Some of them feel indifferent.
One of them feels that it should depend on the cleaner’s age.
Others feel that it is the cleaners’ job to clear the tables.

Do you clear your plates at home or at public places?

Most of them feel that it is only right to clear their plates at home.
Few of them feel that they are just too lazy to do so.
It is only their responsibility to do it.
They feel that it is the cleaners’ responsibility to do so.

After doing this survey, do you think you will clear up our own plates?

Yes, they feel that this has let them realized how taxing is it for the cleaners to clear up every single table.
No, they feel that this is a survey after all and would not change their lifestyles.
Some feels that they would consider and give a second thought to clear their own plates.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, most of the people are just too lazy to clear the plates or feel that it should be the cleaners’ responsibility to clear it up for them. However, there are still a small number of people who would still clear up their plates. Knowing the use of such behaviours, the polytechnic’s administration can come out with ideas or measures to encourage the students to be more responsible for their behaviours.

An exploratory study of the phenomenon of dressing among students in Singapore Polytechnic.

2008-01-17T10:44:00.000+08:00

GROUP: MAD COW DISEASE

Title : An exploratory study of the phenomenon of dressing among students in
Singapore Polytechnic.

Date : 3rd January 2008, AY 2007/08, Semester 2

Conducted by : Bernice Seet Seng Gek (P0734404, DEPM/1B/01)
Audrey See Cai Hoon (P0717193, DBA/1B/08)
Zeng Shuhui (P0644684, DPFM/2A/21)
Xu Jia Wei (P0660486, DCSE/2A/22)
Kelvin Yeo (P0620602, DCHE/2A/23)
Zheng Ting Ting (P0738515, DMTM/1A/22)
Nurul Aini Binte Mohd Zaheid (P0535832, DMTM/3A/21)

AIM OF STUDY
The aim of this study is to answer the main research question as below:
Why do student pay special attention to their outer appearance in Singapore Polytechnic?

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS METHODS (TING TING)

This study employs a qualitative social-psychological research paradigm. The research is conducted in a Polytechnic in the eastern part of Singapore. The research takes a total of six weeks to complete. The research stretches from 28th Nov 2007 to 11th Jan 2008

The forms of data collection for the research are as below:
a) Each of our group members approached students in the polytechnic. We interviewed a total of 35 students from different courses. We observed the trends and know more about the way they will want to present themselves to the public. Each of the interviews took around 10-15 minutes.

The forms of analysis used are as follow:
a) Open Coding.
b) Noting relations between variables
c) Finding intervening variables
d) Clustering

FINDINGS
The findings for this research are as follows:

The conditions and the causes that influence the trends and students appearance are as follows:

Types of courses
In this study, it is shown that the types of courses the students are in influence the way that they dress up. For example, engineering students will need to wear covered shoes and simple clothing so that they will not hurt their toes or be hindered by their fanciful clothing while working at the workshop. On the other hand, students taking business courses which emphasize on the interaction with people and presentable self will tend to wear formal clothing as in the business world they will be in later. As for students taking fashion or design courses, they tend to dress up more outstanding and fanciful. Giving another example, it will be inappropriate for a nursing course student to put on heavy make-up. However, there are students whose clothing are not influenced by the types of courses they are in. These students believe their types of clothing are affected by their dressing sense and comfort zone.

Types of peers
Peers also play an important part in influencing students’ dressing. This is especially true for those who are very close to each other. They want to have same design of shirts to show their sisterhood or brotherhood. These peers make them feel that they are recognised in their groups.

Fashion trend
Students may be influenced by the clothing that their singing or movie idols wear. They want to emulate them. This makes them feel that they closer to their idols. At the same time, other students keep up with the trend and dress themselves with ‘IN’ type of clothes.

Types of occasion
Students may dress themselves up on special occasions such as wedding, graduation night and presentation or other important dates in the polytechnic.

CONCLUSION
In order to provide the most effective solution to a problem, there is a need to understand the problem thoroughly. This applies for students studying in Singapore Polytechnic. From this study, we get to know that students do put in effort in dressing up. However, there are some who prefer to wear simply to school and some student dress up only on special occasions. Some students feel inferior when their peers’ dresses are more appealing than them. As a result, they may start to pay attention on their dressing. Some students feel that it is only appropriate for them to emphasise on their dressing if their course requires them to. From our analysis, we are able to conclude that students in Singapore polytechnic emphasise on their dressing. There are many reasons behind this conclusion but the key factors are mainly that they believe first impression counts and good appearance bring confidence. Polytechnics are like a fashion world. Stepping into a lifestyle free from school uniform is a huge jump for most of the students here. Hence, in order to be able to blend into the colourful crowd, most students will have a mindset of putting the best looking front in front of other at all times. In additional, looking good makes one feel better. And as a result, one’s confidence and self-esteem will definitely step up. This makes students easier to socialize around with other.