Reasons for research on long working hours and health
Discuss about the Long Working Hours In Singapore And Its Impact On Health.
The excerpt by Saadan (2017, July 28) is focussed on the issue of long working hours in Singapore and its impact on health. The article points out that working long hours is detrimental to health and well-being. Long working hours is associated with increase in risk of stroke, heart failure and other health-related conditions. Conducting research to confirm the impact of long working hours is important because long working hours has become an issue for majority of employees in the world. Singaporeans are known for long working hours and Australian full time workers spend about 40.7 hours a week at work (Burgess 2016). The detrimental effect of long workings hours on employees is understood from the fact that working outside shift lowers employee motivation level, decreases productivity and lead to many health problems for workers.
Fatigue is common among workers. A study associated night shifts and long working hours with sleep related disorders. This may contribute to daytime sleepiness and compromised cognitive functions such as asthma, arthritis and chronic pulmonary disease. Sleep deprivation reduces workers ability to concentrate, learn new fact and reduces response time of workers (Caruso, 2014). Long working hours is also associated with depressive state, psychological disorders and other health related issues (Bannai & Tamakoshi, 2014). Hence, this may negatively have an impact on job performance and worker’s ability to cope with challenges and new demands in the workplace. Therefore, as competence and productivity is hampered due to long working hours (Lee & Lim, 2017), conducting research to confirm ill-effect of long workings hours on workers of Singapore is important. This may help to identify whether employees working outside their shift are vulnerable to chronic disease in the future or not. Getting validated and evidence based data may help to determine health effect of long working hours and this may also lead to government’s action to promote health and well-being of workers by providing healthy workings hours to employee.
In the field of social science, approach is defined as the epistemology, purpose and meta-theories of research. It defines assumptions related to human behaviour and the role of ideas and interest in defining and interpreting social behaviour of phenomenon. Two research philosophy-ontology and epistemology relates to major approaches in social science research. Ontology is concerned with the question ‘what is’ and it deals with identifying nature of existence and structure of reality about the world. It defines method of interpretation with the central question whether social entities in research are perceived as objective or subjective (Ormston et al. 2014). In contrast to ontological approach, the main assumption of epistemology is to analyse how we know things. It focuses on the nature, source and limits of knowledge. Hence, epistemological basis is concerned with identifying how knowledge related to a social phenomenon can be uncovered or investigated. Questions like how knowledge can be acquired and how to determine the applicability of specific research method for specific research question (Moon & Blackman, 2014). Three types of research approach in the field of social science includes:
- Positivist social science: When a social entity is identified as objective, then it can be said that social entities or research subjects are independent from social actors. This approach is defined as objectivism or positivism. Positive social science is a method that uses empirical observations to discover patterns of human activity or behaviour. The main of social science research is to document universal laws of human behaviour and social reality is a concept that is empirically evident (Ormston et al. 2014).
Discussion on main attributes of the three major social research approaches
The main attributes of Positivist social science approach are as follows:
- It is used to interpret whether the world or social phenomenon is dependent on social order or constant change.
- Social phenomenon in the world by evaluating whether it is subjective or objective
- The ontological approach is based on ‘what’ question.
- It is based on deterministic approach which is based on the assumption that human actions are dependent on external process and structures.
- Based on the methods used to acquire knowledge, the positivist approach can be defined as a research approach that used instrumental orientation to interpret knowledge or phenomenon.
- Positivist approach can be followed in research by quantitative research design such as social suverys and statistics.
- Interpretive social science:
Another approach to social science research is the interpretive social science, where the main aim is to extract meaning related to people’s behaviour and action by analysis of socially meaningful actions. This is in congruent with the purpose of social science research as the interpreting meaningful social action is also an aim of such kind of research (Neuman, 2013).
The main attributes of interpretive research approach are as follows:
- It is based on nominalist ontology
- It adopts constructionist orientation as knowledge is created and shaped by identify the impact of beliefs and meanings on individual behaviour and social reality. Hence, subjective dispositions and motivations of individuals are analyzed to gain answer to research questions.
- Qualitative research method is most suitable for interpretivist approach
- It is based on the assumptions that each individual have complex experience and these experiences shapes the social world around them
- It is possible to use non-scientific method to evaluate any specific social phenomenon (Thanh & Thanh, 2015).
- Critical social science: Another approach coming out from epistemiology or ontology philosophy is the critical social science. This method of inquiry focus on uncovering real structures in the world to improve conditions of vulnerable people in the society and make a better world for them. Hence, it is parallel with the critical realist ontology that social phenomenon are real and these form of reality can be observed without finding any links with other social factors. It also has some elements similar to interpretative social science as critical social science enables researcher to observe all the factors that operate at the real level.
The main attributes of critical sociology are as follows:
- Critical thinking is the main basis to evaluate sociological problems.
- Critical research are more subjective form of research assessment where various other elements affecting a research phenomena is investigated
- The research approach is based on the assumption that various social and cultural variables influence the subject matter of research (Maroun 2012).
After the evaluation and discussion of main attributes of the three major social research methods, it can be said that the research presented by Saadan (2017, July 28) comes under the positivist research approach. This can be said because positivist research tends to find relation between two or more variables by means of official statistics. As the articles focused on the issue of long working hours and its impact on health, the research presented established relationship between long working hours and adverse health outcomes. For example, the research revealed that employees who worked more than 55 hours per week are more likely to develop atrial fibrillation. Hence, by using statistical data, the research established social reality by showing relationship between risk of atrial fibrillation and long working hours. Therefore, the research presented provides quantitative data and it established relationship between two social variables. Hence, the research has been defined to be similar to the positive research approach.
Saadan (2017, July 28) gave an overview about the working hours survey which was conducted by recruitment consultancy in 2016. The survey revealed that 70% work professionals in Singapore work for more than contracted hours and more than 6.5 out of 10 people gave the opinion that working more than contracted hours is necessary for them. The research was done with employees from different professional fields like accounting, finance, technology and engineering. While designing such studies, the two ethical issues that research can face includes the followings:
- Firstly, the researchers may face problem in getting adequate number of samples for research. This is because many workers or employee may not be willing to disclose their working hours to researcher. They may have certain confidential obligations to prevent others from knowing their working hours. Hence, as per ethical standards for conducting social science research, ethical principles related to autonomy and rights of research participants may be violated. Researchers have the obligation to treat participants as autonomous and give them the freedom to choose whether they can participate in research or not. Hence, ethical issues related to autonomy may arise while conducting this form of research. Participants may not be comfortable revealing their working hours to researcher.
- Another ethical issue that can be faced while conducting this form of research includes issues related to beneficence. A research should try to maximize benefits and minimize adverse effect for study participants. However, if research is done without taking informed consent from work provider, it may lead to ethical issues. Hence, risk-benefit analysis is essential to ensure that leave the study feeling the same as they arrived. They should not have feelings of deceptions. Risk-benefit analysis can also eliminate potential risk in research (Dingwall et al. 2017).
References:
Bannai, A., & Tamakoshi, A. (2014). The association between long working hours and health: a systematic review of epidemiological evidence. Scandinavian journal of work, environment & health, 5-18.
Burgess, M., (2016). New data reveals the states where Australians work the longest and shortest hours each week. Retrieved from: https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/at-work/australias-hardest-working-state-revealed/news-story/353727e037c28edcc8de89ffc30f0a97
Caruso, C. C. (2014). Negative impacts of shiftwork and long work hours. Rehabilitation Nursing, 39(1), 16-25.
Dingwall, R., Iphofen, R., Lewis, J., Oates, J., & Emmerich, N. (2017). Towards common principles for social science research ethics: A discussion document for the Academy of Social Sciences. In Finding common ground: Consensus in research ethics across the social sciences (pp. 111-123). Emerald Publishing Limited.
Lee, D., & Lim, H. (2017). Multiple Thresholds in the Nexus between Working Hours and Productivity. Contemporary Economic Policy, 35(4), 716-734.
Maroun, W. (2012). Interpretive and critical research: Methodological blasphemy!. African Journal of Business Management, 6(1), 1-6.
Moon, K., & Blackman, D. (2014). A guide to understanding social science research for natural scientists. Conservation Biology, 28(5), 1167-1177.
Neuman, W. L. (2013). Social research methods: Qualitative and quantitative approaches. Pearson education.
Ormston, R., Spencer, L., Barnard, M., & Snape, D. (2014). The foundations of qualitative research. Qualitative research practice: A guide for social science students and researchers, 2, 52-55.
Saadan, A. (2017, July 28). Are we working too much? Singaporeans at risk of developing health problems due to long hours. AsiaOne. Retrieved from https://www.asiaone.com/health/are-we-workingtoo-much-singaporeans-risk-developing-health-problems-due-long-hours
Thanh, N. C., & Thanh, T. T. (2015). The interconnection between interpretivist paradigm and qualitative methods in education. American Journal of Educational Science, 1(2), 24-27.
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