Long Working Hours and Health, Social Research Approaches, Ethical Issues in Designing Working Hours Survey

Running head: SOCIAL SCIENCE
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1SOCIAL SCIENCE
a) Reasons for research on long working hours and 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

2SOCIAL SCIENCE
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.
b) Discussion on main attributes of the three major social research approaches
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:
1. 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).