Problem
Most of us should be familiar with Community Involvement Programme(CIP). CIP is part of our Co-Curricular Activities (CCA) record, where a maximum of 5 CCA points would be awarded for 100 hours of CIP activities done over the 4 years in secondary school. It serves to create awareness in students of their role and ability to make a difference in our society and community. Through CIP, students are exposed to and motivated to help the less fortunate and those in need. However, with CIP contributing to the CCA record, some people may feel that they are “forced” to do CIP. In this way, it contradicts with the definition of volunteering. In addition, many of us may not continue participating in volunteer work upon graduation since it’s no longer compulsory to fulfill any hours of CIP activities in NUS.
General Research Question
Should community service be made compulsory for all students in NUS to inculcate volunteerism?
Why an attitudinal survey would be needed in order to study this topic?
Having survey allows us to have first hand information which may be more accurate and credible than those found online. Moreover, since the problem involves and affects them, it is important to obtain their views about the issue. Different people may have different experience and thoughts on compulsory community involvement programme.
Objective of the study
The objective of the research study is to determine if students in NUS are involved in volunteer work and if CIP is effective in inculcating volunteerism.
Objective of the report
The objective of the report is to inform the school of the lack of community service among students of NUS and therefore suggest that the school can implement actions to encourage volunteerism.
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3 comments:
Hi Daijing, personally I feel that by awarding CCA points for the number of hours a student commit to CIP does not inculcate volunteerism. The motivation to do CIP under such system is most likely due to the student wanting a good CCA record, rather than the passion for volunteering for a good cause. However, of course this is only my point of view and it would be good for relevant authorities to have an idea of whether this current system has been effective in inculcating the spirit of volunteerism. Your study will provide a good feedback channel for these authorities to reflect on their policies on encouraging volunteerism.
With regards to the feasibility of your study, I believe it shouldn't be much of a problem as the general research question is fairly straight forward.Most of students in NUS have done community services before. With their personal experiences, I am sure the survey will be able to achieve reliable conclusions.
Focusing on your general research question, I foresee a slight biasness. I am pretty sure a good majority of students would not favour compulsory community service. The thought of being obliged to do community service will be viewed as a unnecessary liability. As such, the results may be skewed to one extreme. Perhaps, we can change the research question to "Is compulsory CIP effective in inculcating volunteerism among students?".
Cheers,
Edwin
Hi DaiJing, many of us are indeed familiar with CIP. From my point of view, CIP is a good channel for students who wish to experience voluntary work to be involved to a certain extent. However, it does not necessarily inculcate volunteerism. Moreover, many students do not understand (or bother) about the objective of voluntary work (e.g.: Flag Day). Many do not take things seriously and get involved just to clock sufficient number of hours.
However, my opinions are inadequate in representing the rest of the student population. Hence, it will be beneficial to carry out your study, so that the current system can be reviewed and improved.
It was not mentioned in your entry who your survey respondents would be, but I deduce that your target respondents are NUS students. The collection of data from NUS students would have experienced CIP before should not be a problem since CIP is a nation-wide project. However, a deeper understanding into the feedback from charity organisations involved in CIP would be useful in review the system as well. Through interviews, we can find out how effective how CIP been in inculcating volunteerism. This can be found out through qualitative questions like 'How many percent of students involved in CIP programmes at your centre actually volunteer to continue providing their services after the CIP period?'.
Lastly, I do agree with Edwin that the research question would be more apt if changed to "Is compulsory CIP effective in inculcating volunteerism among students?".
(:
From what I remember, the minimum CIP hours to fulfill an average CCA requirement are rather short. Since CCA points are not a vital factor to get into university, many students do not really care how high the CCA points must be.
Regarding the research question - Should community service be made compulsory for all students in NUS to inculcate volunteerism? I think there might be a logic flaw. The issue is some people think the CIP in secondary school and JC should not be compulsory, but the question is whether NUS should implement compulsory CIP. It would be better to change the question to whether secondary schools and JCs should make CIP voluntary. This prevents the bias of the survey.
This is my personal opinion, and I don’t know if I made myself clear enough. I think the topic is feasible to do, but we just need to be very careful of the phrasing of survey questions.
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