Statistical Research Method Project

Scope: 

More often than not, people possess the stereotype that Singapore is the "perfect" country to call home. Singapore has never lost its status of being a "prestigious first world country",  but in recent years, several factors have become rather noticeable an evident. Phrases like "Singapore is so stressful" and "Come here is join rat race one" have surely been heard numerous times. A study on Data.gov.sg showed that Singapore is the 2nd most expensive city to live in, and 92% of its working citizens reported to be stressed or anxious. This begs the question, "Is Singapore really a good place to live in?"

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My team and I were given the task to answer this big question: “Is Singapore a Good Place to Live In.” By focusing on different aspects of Singapore’s society such as education, healthcare and cost of living, we used various mathematical methods like hypothesis testing, confidence intervals, correlation and linear regression to conclude whether the data we had supported the claim made

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My role and solution: 

 

Our team prepared and scheduled the entire project's timeframe, talked about our individual tasks, and set dates for meetings and submission deadlines. ​

My primary responsibility in this project was to search and gather quality datasets for my group, as well as phrase our interview questionnaires such that the questions posed were easily understandable and intuitive. With quality questions came quality responses and therefore quality data. This helped the team make informed decisions based on statistics and facts. Through my knowledge in data visualization techniques, I also aided data preparation and created dashboard visuals.

 

Work process:  

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We began the project by sourcing the internet for quality datasets from reliable sources.

 

We also made our own survey, that consisted of mostly close ended questions which enabled our data received to be quantifiable. For example, my segment was “Cost of Living”, so my questions went something like "Did you notice a surge in prices? If yes, which? (Can select more than one option, select "None" if you did not notice a surge in prices)"

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My reason for these questions was to make it as concise and easy to understand as possible. After collecting the data, we had to clean the data by making sure all the entries were valid and did not mess up any of the calculations. We took the data and put it into Microsoft excel, where we created several visuals like bar graphs and charts to help visualize the data we gathered and aided up in spotting trends, anomalies, and enabled us to draw accurate conclusions, which allowed us to construct a sound and quality report. 

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Next up, we started forming our report in a combined docs. All our individual reports had the same structure. Firstly, we began with the introduction, which posed a statement that is widely believed and agreed with. For example, "The cost of living in Singapore is getting more expensive". And then, we add data that we have gathered to test the statement above. This can come from secondary sources like singstat, data.gov.sg, and other verified sources. Then, we conduct statistical testing and draw conclusive insight for the certain topic. (see the images below for an example of the testing we did)

 

However, we believed that just statistical testing from secondary sources cannot give us a sufficient conclusion as to whether we agree or disagree with our sub-hypothesis. Hence, we conducted hypothesis testing, which was taught to us in the class “Statical Research Methods''. We used methods such as a right-tailed paired t-test and confidence intervals to assess whether to accept or reject the stated hypothesis as shown below.

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This is the abstract from our project document, which will serve as the conclusion of this project brief. 

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This report presents research and findings on five main aspects of Singapore: Education, Healthcare, Cost of Living, Safety and Lifestyle, to ultimately determine if Singapore is a good country to live in. This serves as a brief update to Singaporeans on the current living condition in Singapore.

 

We chose these five aspects as they are of utmost importance to assess the quality of a country. (Quality of Life in Singapore, n.d.) In a perfect country, residents should be able to receive the best education and healthcare and live a safe, low-cost, stress-free life. We conveniently surveyed 120 Singaporeans over a period of 6 days on Google Forms, and our results suggest Singaporeans reflect positively on Singapore, especially on the healthcare and safety aspects.

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We also resorted to using some other data (secondary), namely from Statista, Singstat and Data.gov.sg, to conduct our statistical testing. However, after testing our data, we are unable to support the claim that “Singapore is a good country to live in” due to the limited amount of data we collected, and varying data collection methods and domains of our secondary data. Moreover, our claim on whether “Singapore is a good country to live in'' is subjective, it varies from person to person, as everyone’s thoughts on a perfect country are different. Our report standardizes a country to be good if it excels in all the five aspects mentioned, but it might not be the case for everyone. Therefore, we do not have enough evidence to support the claim that “Singapore is a good country to live in''.

 

**We could extend our project by informing residents that Singapore might not be a good country to live in, even though it is widely known to be.** It really depends on personal preference and the research methods used to collect the data. Therefore, we should not always trust the sources we read, and should evaluate their credibility by looking into their research methods and domains.

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[note: the gallery pictures are not sized correctly and I am unable to change them, so please click here or the button in the introduction to view the document for better readability, thanks]

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