SINGAPORE - Researchers from the Singapore University of the Social Sciences (SUSS) will be conducting a five-year study into how Singaporeans use their time.
The project will involve 1,000 families or about 3,000 individual participants, SUSS said at a funding presentation ceremony on Monday (Aug 16).
SUSS will seek to understand how Singaporeans' routines and rituals have been changed by the pandemic and its restrictions on social activity and how caregiving arrangements for the young and old are evolving.
The study will do this by looking at how much time Singaporeans spend at home, the workplace or school, and their attitudes towards this, researchers said.
At the ceremony held in SUSS' campus in Clementi, the National Council of Social Service (NCSS) and non-profit organisation Ngee Ann Kongsi (NAK) inked an agreement to contribute about $2.27 million to the study, which is named NCSS-NAK 360 Panel Research.
It was attended by Minister of State for Education and Social and Family Development Sun Xueling.
In his speech at the event, SUSS president Cheong Hee Kiat said the research will be able to contribute to good policy decisions by helping policymakers understand what is happening on the ground.
The principal investigator of the study is psychologist Leong Chan-Hoong, an associate professor at the SUSS Centre for Applied Research.
He told The Straits Times that the study has been in the works for about a year.
He said: "We are looking at how time can be used as a proxy to measure Singaporean's priorities, from family duties to work and education, an area which is very under-researched in this country."
He added: "Although there are other tracking studies in Singapore, none so far have focused on the entire household.
"Doing so will allow us to get more insights into family dynamics and allow us to understand the perspectives of people playing different roles in a household."
The study will take a random sample of 1,000 Singaporean households, defined as those living under one roof, taking into account a variety of family structures.
Participants must be at least 10 years old when they begin to be interviewed for the study. The fieldwork is set to start over the next few months.
The study will follow the 1,000 families over the next five years with repeated interviews.
Prof Leong added that the five-year time frame would allow researchers to measure how Singaporeans cope with major life changes such as national examinations, marriage, divorce and having children and how they are supported by their families through these.
He said the funding will allow researchers to compensate participants and hire interviewers.
