Contents
Question 1
Case Study Education Minister Desmond Lee has said that the Ministry of Education will look to strengthen school policies on bullying and harmful behaviour, as part of the Comprehensive Action Review against bullying, which was initiated in 2025. Several high-profile incidents of bullying have been reported in the media, highlighting the need for greater attention to the issue and strengthening of policies to address the issue. Bullying has been associated with many adverse outcomes including mental health issues, behavioural problems, and physical consequences, which can have lasting effects on individuals in the long term. As stated by Minister Lee, there is no one clear-cut approach to addressing the complex issue of bullying, which requires the involvement of multiple parties, including the school system, educators, and parents.
Source: Schools to get stronger anti-bullying policies, review of discipline framework: Desmond Lee. (2025, August 27). Channel News Asia. https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/bullying-schools-discipline- moe-desmond-lee-5317211
Suppose the Singapore government would like to find out more about bullying in Singapore. You are tasked to submit a research proposal that will elaborate on how you can apply relevant concepts and research methods to study the topic. Your proposal should be written as an essay and include the following five parts.
Title And Abstract Of Research Proposal
Propose a title that fits your research proposal. Also, include an abstract that properly describes and summarises your proposed study. The abstract must not exceed 150 words.
- Both the title and abstract should be included in your total word count.
- The title should clearly indicate what your proposed study is about. (5 marks)
Background And Literature Review
Examine relevant literature on an issue related to bullying in Singapore that you would like to study. Analyse the identified literature, examine the research methods used in the existing studies, and critique the strengths or weaknesses of these studies. Following your literature review, you should propose a specific and clear research question that you would like to study. The research question should be about bullying in Singapore. You should also discuss the importance of the study you have proposed.
- You can choose to study any topic related to bullying in Singapore. The key is that you can clearly describe the topic you would like to study based on your literature review. Examples of possible topics include the following: factors that may contribute to bullying incidents in Singapore, consequences of bullying, impact of an initiative that aims to reduce bullying in Singapore etc.
- For your literature review, you need to include at least five academic journal articles that are relevant to the topic of your choice. It is acceptable if one or more journal articles that you have selected are not done in Singapore. The key is that you should explain explicitly how the selected journal articles inform your proposed research.
- In your literature review, you should critically evaluate the strengths or weaknesses of the selected journal articles, rather than merely present the methods or findings of these previous studies in a descriptive manner. Based on your literature review, discuss the importance of the study you propose, such as how your proposed study addresses a specific limitation of the past studies, any theoretical or practical contribution(s) your research finding(s) may make, etc.
Research Design
Apply relevant concepts and propose a research design to address your research question with respect to the following aspects:
(i) explain whether you plan to use a quantitative or qualitative method and why,
(ii) briefly describe your proposed method and discuss critical elements in your research procedure, and
(iii) discuss possible threats to the validity of your research and explain how you will address these threats.
- You should first explain whether you plan to use a quantitative or qualitative method. Provide at least two reasons to explain why you choose one method over another. If you choose to use both quantitative and qualitative methods, provide at least two reasons to justify your choice too.
- Next, discuss the critical elements in the research procedure. You are required to at least describe your sampling strategy, data collection method(s), and procedure of data collection.
- For sampling strategy, at a minimum specify the population your study targets (for example, youths aged 13-18), the number of participants you will recruit, and how you will recruit participants for your study.
- For data collection method(s), if you choose to use a quantitative method, you need to include the survey. If you choose to use a qualitative method, you need to include the interview (either semi-structured interview or focus group) questions. You should explain clearly whether you plan to develop the survey/interview questions from scratch, use existing survey/interview questions, or adapt existing survey/interview questions to study your research question. You need to include all survey questions that you propose to use in the Appendix.
- Describe the procedure of administering the survey or conducting the interviews.
- You should also discuss at least two possible concerns in the use of survey or interview method that may threaten the validity of your research. Explain how you will address these concerns.
Ethical Issues
Recognise and appreciate at least two ethical issues in your proposed study that concern research participants. Discuss action(s) you will take to address each issue, to ensure that your proposed study will be conducted ethically.
- The two ethical issues that concern research participants (for example, protection of participants’ autonomy) should be discussed specifically in the context of your proposed study.
Limitations Of Research
Discuss at least two limitations of your proposed study in understanding the chosen topic about bullying in Singapore.
- Examples of possible limitations you can discuss include: the planned sampling strategy, limitations in the chosen data collection method(s), etc. The discussion should focus on limitations of the chosen methodology to address the research question of your proposal and should be limitations that cannot be resolved in your proposed study.
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Expert Answers on Above Research Proposal on Bullying in Singapore
Research proposal on understanding the causes and effects of bullying among students in Singapore.
Background and literature review
The concept of bullying in school is a highly studied concept because of its negative impact on a students overall development. The victims of bullying are often faced with issues like anxiety, depression and reduced academic performance. Studies in the past have clearly identified several factors that influence bullying such as peer pressure, school climate and lack of supervision. Although the previous researches have utilised the larger sample size and validated survey instruments, most of them rely heavily on self reported data, and there were very few studies focused on Singapore.
Research question
The main research that drives the given research is what are the factors contributing to bullying among secondary school students in Singapore.
Importance of the study
This study is highly important because it clarifies the bullying pattern in Singapore schools and provides measures to educators in designing effective prevention strategies.
Research Design
The methods selected for analysis are quantitative survey methods because they allow for collection of data from a large number of students, and it can be analysed using statistical measures to give relevant findings about the relationship between bullying and student outcomes.
Sampling strategy
The target population for the given study is secondary school students in the age group of 13 to 18 years in Singapore. A sample of 200 students is considered and they will be selected randomly after taking permission from school administrators.
Data Collection method
The collection of data will be performed using structured questionnaire surveys and questions will be adopted from existing bullying research scales and modified to fit the Singapore school context. The collection of data using surveys will be performed through online channels.
Ethical issues
In order to perform the research in an ethical way, there would be informed consent obtained prior to collecting data, none of the participants would be forced in any way to participate in the research. The protection of the data would be ensured through complete anonymity through the research.
| The model answer above is reviewed by Lynn Tan, good at writing research tasks on concepts of bullying. Disclaimer: This answer is a model for study and reference purposes only. Please do not submit it as your own work. |
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