Objective & Method
An online survey is conducted using the Surveymonkey.com to question primary and secondary students about their opinions on heavy school bag. The objective of this survey is to understand the problem from student’s point of view.
The survey is conducted in one week period and all members are responsible in distributing the survey. Participants’ age range is set between 7 - 17 years old. The sample size is set to a minimum of 100 people with an expectancy of a good mixture of both primary and secondary students in Singapore and overseas. Due to large age range of the sample group, questions were written as simple as possible to minimize the chance of misunderstanding (see Appendix 1). The survey is set out with three choices of answer, this is to enable answers to be easily tabulated for a better data analysis.
Survey Result and Analysis
The survey was distributed to students in Indonesia and China due to lack of access to Singaporean primary and secondary students. In total, there were 124 respondents to the survey, however, standard membership on Surveymonkey only allows 100 responses to be shown and analyzed.
From the result, a significant 92% of the respondents (fig 2.2a) is comprised of secondary students aged 13 - 17 years old. Due to this, the survey result is considered to reflect the opinions of the dominant group only.
The responses received for question 3 (fig 2.2b) show uniformity on the answers. Out of one hundred students, thirty nine of them feel that their bags are very heavy on regular basis; similarly thirty four say their bags are heavy on occasion days. While twenty nine say their bags are heavy on most days. This shows that most students do feel that their bags are very heavy. The answers to other possible determinants of heavy school bag questions such as number of lessons in a day; the length of time taken to travel from home to school and the frequency of having to carry additional equipments, may suggest the significance of these determinants in causing the heavy bag problem. 
The collected answers to the question of number of lessons in a day are rather evenly distributed (fig), hypothetically it is only a small percentage of 39% having to carry the most books to school since they have more than four lessons per day. So this determinant only affects a small group of people, thus, it cannot be said to be the major cause of the issue
It is also the same in the case of the students’ travel time from home to school (fig 2.2d). Nearly half of the students take around fifteen to thirty minutes travel, 21% of them take less than fifteen minutes and 33% take more than thirty minutes. There is a tendency that students live not so close to school by looking at the time taken to travel, however, it depends largely on the method of transportation taken to measure how severe the consequences of heavy school bag on the students. By walking or taking public transportation, students have to carry their bags for a longer time, thus, consequences are greater on their body.
For the frequency of carrying additional school tools or equipments (fig 2.2e), majority of students (42%) admit that only sometimes they have to carry extra things apart from books for their lessons, however, quite a big number of students (32%) also say that they have to carry extra personal belongings on daily basis such as water bottles, wallet, lunchbox, calculator, phone charger, iPad, etc. Most of them explain on their comments to the question “The things inside your bag usually,” that these are necessities.
Students, however, are aware of the consequences of this issue. 86.21% out of one hundred respond that they know about the negative impacts on their physical health from carrying heaving bag in long-term (fig 2.2f). Although students understand the risks, they are reluctant to take any actions to resolve the issue. “No time to pack, just bring everything to school, “and “Don’t see the point in packing.” these two comments to the question “Do you pack your own bag?” (fig 2.2g) are the evidences of what some students think about properly packing their bags. Students also feel that their parents are not concerned about this issue and take no action to resolve it (fig 2.2h). Parents seem to be more concerned about this issue on younger children as evidenced on the case study of parents’ and teachers’ opinion in newspaper articles. The case study shows that the media relates the issue to primary school students while excluding older secondary students completely, making the issue biased to them. The media tendency to see it as primary students’ issue may explain market low response in providing ergonomics school bag for secondary students (see case study 2.1).
Similarly, majority of students feel that their school and teachers have done nothing to help reduce their bag’s weight. Out of one hundred, only fifteen feel their teachers tried to prevent them from carrying too heavy bags (fig 2.2i). From the comments (fig 2.2j & 2.2k), some students say show how teachers try to help in solving this issue. It varies from advising students of what to bring the next day to allowing them to leave books under the table. 
Conclusion
Overall, the answers to the survey conclude that secondary school students are physically suffering from the weight of their bags. Despite being aware of the consequences it may cause, these students are still carrying heavy bags and majority of them feel that teachers and parents are not doing anything to solve this problem.
One of the ways that this survey can be further improved is by tailoring more specific questions that source out clearer answer. For example, instead of asking the frequency of carrying extra things, the question can be changed to ‘Do you carry electronic gadgets and other extra things other than books to school everyday?” Also the choices of answer should be more distinct, for instance, rare, sometimes and everyday can be the choices instead of sometimes, often and everyday.
