What About Your Free Time?

A Survey of People’ Free Time in Singapore

Xu Yi and Zhang Lei

National Institute of Education

CSP 101: Digital Literacy Skills

Ms Ho

2 March 2006

What About Your Free Time?

A Survey of People’ Free Time in Singapore

Singapore is an international country and keeps advancing all the time. With the development of modern society, people are suffering more stress from different areas, such as competition of work, supporting family and so on. The impression that people in Singapore give us is busy and hard-working. There are many questions about their free time we want to know. Do people have free time? What will they do? Who will they spend with? Do they think their free time is enough?

Methodology

Design of Questionnaires

Because we want to know how people in Singapore arrange their free time in order to stand the pace, we are focusing our attention on how many hours do they have as free time per day. Then we design questions from different angles such as sports, entertainments and traveling. Spending free time alone or with other people is another point we are interested in. After get enough information we ask their attitude about if it is needed to plan their free time and if their free time is enough. We try our best to let our questions be cleared, overall planned and logical. We think we can get what we want though these questions.

Survey and Interview

Before we took action, we made lots of preparation. We decided that the third day of Chinese New Year and Jurong Point were the most suitable time and place for we to do the survey. We took our student’s cards in order to confirm our identities.  Though we had copies of questionnaires, we asked people questions only by talking. Because we want to record the answers quickly and clearly, we chose the method like this: one of us asked a person questions while the other wrote down, and then we changed our turns. In this way we can focus on interviewee and both us will have a good chance to practice our oral communication still. Though some people were busy and didn’t have time to do the survey for us, we thanked them all the same.

Respondents

We want to let our survey cover more kinds of people. So 8 students in NTU we choose range from year 1 to year 4 and from different countries and different schools. The rest we interviewed around Jurong Point are different, including men and women, young and old, local and foreigner, JC student, workers, officer, teacher and so on. Most people were friendly to us and willing to answer our questions. Sometimes they thought for a long time and tried to give us more details and reasons about what they chose. There are also many memorable conversations between us. Because of their supports, we finished our 20 people-survey successfully.

Results

According to the result of the survey, we find that 55% of the interviewees think their free time are less than 4 hours, 20% of them think their free time is between 4 to 5 hours. 10% of the answers are 5 to 6 hours and 6 to 7 hours is 15%. Only one person said his free time is 8 hours. (See Table 1)

Table 1

How Much Free time Do You Think You Have Per Day?

13 of our interviewees often do sports, and they do many kinds. (See Figure 1)

Figure 1

What Kind of Sports Do You like to Take Part in During Your Free Time?

(Because some people give more than one answer, we just add up the number of the people who say that.)

2 people spend less then 1 hour on the computer, and 12 people spend 1 to 3 hours on it. 4 people spend 4 to 6 hours. One people work on it while.

During the public holidays, 55% of the interviewees prefer to stay at home and one people not sure and the rest of them will choose to go out to spend their holidays. When they go out, mostly they will go shopping; more details will be shown on the following chart. (See Figure 2)

Figure 2

What Would You Like to Do When You Go Out?

 (Because some people give more than one answer, we just add up the number of the people who say that.)

Half of the interviewees spend their free time with their friends and 5 of them will be with their family members and 3 people say half to half .there is two people alone. (See Figure 3)

Figure 3

Who Will You Always Spend Free Time With?

14 of the interviewees show the thought of traveling to other countries, 6 of them think it is not very important for them, because they often go to other countries because of work.

And when we ask people which country they want to travel, they give us more than one country, so the result is shown on the following figure. (See Figure 4)

Figure 4

Which Country You Want to Travel?

12 of them do not make a plan for their free time while 7of them make a plan for their free time, one will make a plan if it is necessary. (See Table 2)

Table 2

Do You Often Make a Plan For Your Free Time?

When asked whether  they have enough free time, 35% of the interviewees think their free time is enough and 55% think they need more free time to relax themselves and one think it depend on his work.

Discussion

We get many interesting points after discussing the result of our survey.

Finding one shows that there are 7 people in 20 think they have enough free time, and that is out of our prediction, which we think all the people will complain they don’t have enough free time.

About half of people like to spend their free time with their friends more than family members, that’s what we find. The situation is similar to China and the reason maybe generational gap. Everyone has his circle of friends. The similar age and common interests can make them together during their free time.

Finding three tell us there are many people like doing sports and many kinds of sports they choose including all the ball games and other aerobic exercises.

The last finding we get is nearly half of people like to stay at home though they have a several-days’ holiday. And many people go out to do shopping just want to satisfy their basic need. Maybe when they work, they spend too much time outside and they want to enjoy more free time at home.

Conclusion and Recommendation

From the findings and discussion, we can get that people in Singapore have a healthy lifestyle. Many of them want to do sports to keep fit and get information form internet. To avoid suffering too much stresses, have some free time with others is a good way.

But what we want to say is please pay more time with your family. We used to spend time with friends in China, but after we came to Singapore, we began to know how much we miss our parents. So please value every minute with your family.

Yes this is just a small survey but we learn a lot form it. We get what we want by ourselves form designing questions to writing this report. We believe, what we gain are not only the information about people’s lifestyle in Singapore, but also the experiences how can we do a survey. We trust we’ll do much better nest time.

Appendix A

Questionnaire

Survey of Singaporean’s attitudes about their free time

_____________________________________________________________________________

QUESTIONNAIRE

1. How many hours do you usually spend on leisure active on average per day?

A. Less than 4

B. 4~5

C. 5~6

D. More than 6

Appendix B

Data Summary

1. How many hours do you usually spend on leisure active on average per day?

2. Do you often do some sports in your free time?

3. What kind of sports do you like to take part in during your spare time?

4. How much do you spend on surfing the internet?

5. If you have a public holiday, will you go out or stay at home?

6. What would you like to do when you are out?

7. Do you often spend your free time with your friends or your family members?

8. Which country would you like to pay a visit if you have a chance?

9. Do you often make a plan for your free time?

10. Do you think your free time is enough?

Appendix C

Reflections on My Learning

My Contribution to the Report

Writing the Methodology, the Discussion and the Conclusion and Recommendation are my contribution to the report. And my partner and I discussed the data we got and gained many conclusions together.

What I Learned from Undertaking This Report

I learned how to make a clear outline before I want to write such a big essay. And I knew that you should pay more attention to the details if you wan to do a perfect job.

What I Found Different

I didn’t know how to organize our opinions and express our ideas by using suitable sentences. And the typing task took me too long a time because even every space we must make sure it is correct.

The Teamwork within My Group

But the teamwork within my group is very good. We discuss the data and each of us takes half part of the whole job. I am good at writing while he is good at analyzing so we can use our different advantages to finish different tasks. Every time I finished a paragraph my partner would have a look and gave me some suggestions. I also showed him some my advices to the results.

My advice for next year’s students

To the students next year, I want to say, choosing a good partner is half success of your task. And please don’t worry about the assignment at first sight, if you follow the steps provided by teachers, you’ll soon find all the things can be done well. But never take this just as a interesting thing because you can really gain more from it not only the information you get. The last sentence I want to share with you is “Enjoy doing survey and enjoy writing report!”

Content Map and Outline

Our report

5 questions I asked myself to make a clear outline.

I.       1st question: What am I want to know?

Our dears: The season why we choose this topic

A.    The situation of modern society

B.     The state of us

II.     2nd question: What did I do to prepare our survey?

Questions we set and preparation we did

A.    Design the questions

B.     Choose the date and place

III.    4th question: What results did we get after our interview?

Data we calculate with charts and tables

IV.    3rd question: What T did we do during the survey?

The process we did interview and response from people

V.     5th question: What about our discussion and conclusion?

Here are 3 findings we get and some suggestions to all

A.    Singaporean has a healthy lifestyle

B.     You should pay more time with your family

Appendix D

Zhang Lei

______________________________________________________________________________

Reflections on My Learning

My Contribution to the Report

I add the data of the survey and write the result of the report. We discuss the result together and I say some ideas about survey.

What I Learned from Undertaking This Report

I learn how to do the report and also I learn how to work with other people and give my advice to my partner. I can use Excel to make the diagram. The most difficult thing I meet is that how to show the result with a good way.

What I Found Difficult

I am not sure the way I use to describe the data of the survey is right and suitable .to organize the diagram and the data is another thing, which group of data should be made as a diagram and which is unnecessary to do so.

The Teamwork within My Group

The team work in my group is very good, we decide the topic together and we also help each other to do the survey, at writing report we do different part of the work and exchange our ideas , during this assignment we also practice our ability.

My Advice for Next Year

1. Do not fear that you can not finish this work, before you try and do it; you never know your ability.

2. Try to pick up the easy and narrow topic, because you can control the topic and find some interesting things in this topic.

3. Please go ahead of the time, if you want to finish it just the deadline is coming; you will not do a good job and learn something from it.

4. Try to work with your partner; it is a good chance to learn how to work with other people.

Mind Map

Outline

A Survey of People’ Free Time in Singapore

I.       Methodology

A.    Respondents

B.    The Experience of Doing the Survey

Our way to do the survey

C.    Design of Questionnaires

We make the question easily to answer and cover the topic we want to talk about

II.     Result

A.    Some Important Figures and Tables.

These figure and tables cover the results we think is important to the survey.

B.    The Detail of the Result

C.    Discussion

III.    Conclusion

And Recommendation

A.    Our Suggestions

We give our advices according to the result we get.