How many times has it been since you left your light or fan on when you went out of a room? For me? It's countless of times, especially when I was staying in campus as the electrical bill has been counted into the fixed hostel fees. Also, most of us who are staying with our parents tend to neglect the importance of flipping the switch, such as for the toilet after you have done with you business.
Sure we all know we are suppose to save electricity whenever we can and all it takes is just a flip of a switch to do so. And yet more often then not, we neglect to do so, most of the time the reason being "I was in a rush" or "Too troublesome since i have to on it again soon". I have to admit, this was how i acted when I was with my parents and stayed in the hostel. There was a semester when i NEVER turned off my fan unless i will be away for a long period of time (a few days).Why? Well leaving the fan on makes the room feel cooler once i open the door, though the coolness could have been achieve just by switching on the fan for a few minutes. During that time I also had the mindset of "Since i paid the hostel fees, i might as well make full use of it." By now i might have earned the glare from environmentalist since I am contributing to global warming by doing so. Don't get me wrong, I am an environmentalist myself, I love nature, I recycle paper and cans and such. Just when it came to electricity, I could not feel/see the impact of wasting it since after all, I do not see the bill.
That is, until i moved out to stay on my own. It is a different experience when you have to pay for your own bill, usually it's either paid by our parents or paid for already. When you have the bill and the numbers staring back at you, you will finally realize the amount of electricity you have wasted by not flipping that switch when you should. If you don't realize it, your wallet would be the one feeling the pain.
That being said, I would like to perform a research on whether students turned off all their electrical appliances (mainly lights and fan) before leaving their room. Factors that would also be taken into account are whether their living in campus hostels, with their parents or renting a room outside. Also it would be more interesting to divide the data into males and females. I have heard that women tend to off their switches more often compared to men.
Researh questions:
Does students who see their bills/pay for the bills are more aware on conserving energy compare to those who do not?
The research details would be as follows:
Hypothesis:
Students which stays with their parents or in campus would neglect to off the switch more often compared to students who have to pay for their own bills.
A side experiment could also be done with the following hypothesis:
Men tend to neglect to off the switch more often compared to women.
Problem statement.
The objective of this study is to analyze the awareness of students on turning off their appliances when they leave the room and whether the place they live in (or seeing the bill) and their sex affects their behavior.
The objective of the study is to determine whether students who are paying for their own bills are more aware on saving energy compared to those who do not have to.
Purpose statement.
The objective of this study is to determine if students who have to pay their own bills/see the bills would be more aware on conserving energy. Another objective would be to find out whether awareness of students on conserving energy could be increased by informing them on their energy usage and thus devising a way to cultivate a habit for students to turn off their switches when not in use.
Sure we all know we are suppose to save electricity whenever we can and all it takes is just a flip of a switch to do so. And yet more often then not, we neglect to do so, most of the time the reason being "I was in a rush" or "Too troublesome since i have to on it again soon". I have to admit, this was how i acted when I was with my parents and stayed in the hostel. There was a semester when i NEVER turned off my fan unless i will be away for a long period of time (a few days).Why? Well leaving the fan on makes the room feel cooler once i open the door, though the coolness could have been achieve just by switching on the fan for a few minutes. During that time I also had the mindset of "Since i paid the hostel fees, i might as well make full use of it." By now i might have earned the glare from environmentalist since I am contributing to global warming by doing so. Don't get me wrong, I am an environmentalist myself, I love nature, I recycle paper and cans and such. Just when it came to electricity, I could not feel/see the impact of wasting it since after all, I do not see the bill.
That is, until i moved out to stay on my own. It is a different experience when you have to pay for your own bill, usually it's either paid by our parents or paid for already. When you have the bill and the numbers staring back at you, you will finally realize the amount of electricity you have wasted by not flipping that switch when you should. If you don't realize it, your wallet would be the one feeling the pain.
That being said, I would like to perform a research on whether students turned off all their electrical appliances (mainly lights and fan) before leaving their room. Factors that would also be taken into account are whether their living in campus hostels, with their parents or renting a room outside. Also it would be more interesting to divide the data into males and females. I have heard that women tend to off their switches more often compared to men.
Researh questions:
Does students who see their bills/pay for the bills are more aware on conserving energy compare to those who do not?
The research details would be as follows:
Hypothesis:
Students which stays with their parents or in campus would neglect to off the switch more often compared to students who have to pay for their own bills.
A side experiment could also be done with the following hypothesis:
Men tend to neglect to off the switch more often compared to women.
Problem statement.
The objective of this study is to analyze the awareness of students on turning off their appliances when they leave the room and whether the place they live in (or seeing the bill) and their sex affects their behavior.
The objective of the study is to determine whether students who are paying for their own bills are more aware on saving energy compared to those who do not have to.
Purpose statement.
The objective of this study is to determine if students who have to pay their own bills/see the bills would be more aware on conserving energy. Another objective would be to find out whether awareness of students on conserving energy could be increased by informing them on their energy usage and thus devising a way to cultivate a habit for students to turn off their switches when not in use.
**Save the earth, a flip of a switch is all its takes**
**edited**
6 comments:
Junyen,
Thanks for providing a context for your interest in this important topic. You seem to list all the elements, but I can't find the general research question. Be careful with mixing up the idea of research with experiment, too. Most would say that experimenting is a form of research, but here you will focus on survey-based research. Finally, you show confusion in your understanding of the concepts of problem and purpose statements.
You need to fine-tune this. But I really appreciate your hard work!
Hello Junyen,
Coolness!!
Your topic is what I would never think of! how your gender determines whether you switched off the fan more often or not! does males tend to not switch off lights and fans? I have never heard that before! This study is done by Dr Junyen, is it? Just joking!
back to the topic:
We, the students are constantly being reminded to conserve the energy, save water, protect the wildlife blah blah blah.However, more often than not, we tend to ignore those messages and continue "destroying" the environment.For example, students like me, after listening to some talk on saving enengy would probably remember to turn off the lights and fans for the next few days. After that, I doubt anyone will continue doing so, having the mindset that the earth will not die if I did not switch off the fan today. It does not make much of a difference. Hence, I think the students need not only the education but also the ability to make it a habit to turn off the lights and fans when we go out of the room.
I think to include the place you live and with who as the variable is good. This is because youngsters tend to "forget" to switch off the lights when they know that their parents would help them to. It is quite interesting to know the exact figures if we get to do this survey as our research project.
In addition, I like how you relate your personal experience into the research topic. I guess if we managed to catch the attention of the NUS management on this issue, the hostel fee will not be so high!! This will benefit everyone!
Hey there!
Your account of your personal experience is hilarious. :D That's so honest man.
Yeah I think most people have this mindset: Since I don't have to pay the bills, I don't really care how much I use. Your point about "Since i paid the hostel fees, i might as well make full use of it" is so true. It's the same when we go to a restaurant for buffet. We stuff our mouths full with as much food as our stomach can(or cannot) tolerate, because we want to get our money's worth. haha. When people waste food at buffet restaurants, they are charged according to the amount of food they waste. Perhaps something could be done along that line in school hostels too? Maybe schools can penalize students whose empty rooms are caught with lights/electricity on?
And the gender thing is also very intriguing. Where did you get that information from? HAHA. I guess it's simply because because females are more tactful than males? =P
But hey! I think this is a very good topic for our research project! Thanks chairman!
Hi Pei Rong
Haha, the gender part was more of my observation, when i was leaving in campus, i tend to notice that my female friends tend to off their lights and fans compared to the males who prefer to just walk out the door and leave them as it is.
It really is saddening when we have all this propaganda on saving energy going around (recently i read about the government rewarding people who are able to reduce their energy consumption by 10%) we hardly notice the reduction on wasting energy.
Part of the reason is being we don't see the *physical* waste as in when compared with water, we can see it physically whereas we don't on electricity.
Maybe if we are able to see the amount of electricity used constantly then there could be increased awareness on energy waste.
Hi Xin Yi
Thanks for the comment and insight on the human mindset. It is intriguing on how selfish we could get. This could be partly due to human's difficulty on percepting large scale situation such as 10,000 years or the whole earth due to the limit of senses.
You do have a good idea on having penalty on students who are wasting energy, however that could be hard to do since that could violate their privacy. Another similar way i can think of is having a limit the electricity they could use like 100$ per month.
Such system is common in other hostels and could similarly be implemented onto our campus hostels.
Hey JunYen!!
wow! I did not know our research topic sound so similar haha! My topic is also based on NUS students not switching off their electrical appliances, just that I am looking at the impact level of Singapore energy campaigns towards NUS students. I guess it really is a troublesome problem yes? Imagine hostel fees going up because of the increase in electricity usage (even then the problem will just worsen yah?)
I would like to know the conclusion to the gender issue you brought up too. It interests me particularly ;p
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