CHEONG CHIEN LI

Title of Project: Health Awareness among Malaysians.

In 2015, studies have shown that nearly 7.5 million people around the world are obese. Looking at just Malaysia alone, studies have also shown that there were approximately 5.3 million people who are overweight in 2015. These eye-opening statistics prompted us to question whether Malaysians are aware about the importance of keeping themselves healthy. Hence, this project was carried out in order to investigate the health awareness of Malaysians.

Firstly, this study is carried out by collecting some personal data from Malaysians regarding their physique, exercising habits, and also exploring their opinions regarding some general healthy habits. This is done by creating survey forms using "Google Forms" and then spreading the forms to friends and relatives using communication platforms such as Whatsapp.

When the sufficient number of respondents have filled in the survey forms, the data collected are then analysed thoroughly in order to show a pattern between different physiques, exercise routines, and health conditions. All of this is done in order to determine whether Malaysians are aware about the importance of staying healthy. Hence, this project was carried out in order to investigate the health awareness of Malaysians.

Firstly, this study is carried out by collecting some personal data from Malaysians regarding their physique, exercising habits, and also exploring their opinions regarding some general healthy habits. This is done by creating survey forms using "Google Forms" and then spreading the forms to friends and relatives using communication platforms such as Whatsapp.

When the sufficient number of respondents have filled in the survey forms, the data collected are then analysed thoroughly in order to show a pattern between different physiques, exercise routines, and health conditions. All of this is done in order to determine whether Malaysians are aware about the importance of staying healthy.

After some thorough analysis, it is found that most of our respondents were students or young adults aged around 20 to 39 years old. This is most likely due to the fact that the survey forms were widely spread into university related Whatsapp groups and hence the respondents were mostly students in their early twenties. As a result, the outcomes and conclusions from our study would more accurately define the health awareness among Malaysian young adults rather than all Malaysians.

On that note, we have found that most of our respondents weighed around 40 to 70kg, and were around 155 to 180cm tall. This showed that their BMI’s were roughly in the range of 16.6 to 21.6. Comparing their BMI’s to the healthy BMI range according to WHO; which is 18.5 to 24.9, we could clearly see that most Malaysian young adults were either slightly underweight or healthy, with a few cases of overweight or obese. Besides, we also asked the respondents about their weekly exercise durations and more than half of the respondents exercised more than 2 hours a week, which is considered a healthy practice as the minimum duration of exercise in order to stay healthy was not less than 2 hours per week. This shows us that Malaysian young adults are considerably healthy.

Next, we asked the respondents whether or not they agree with some statements about general healthcare. Statements such as “exercising helps to reduce stress.”, “Having meals on time is important for health.”, and “Having a balanced diet is important for our health.” Were shown to the respondents and a majority of them either agreed or strongly agreed, with very few who had no comment on the statements and who disagreed.

In short, it can be concluded that Malaysian young adults are aware about their health. This can be seen in not only their physiques, which are mostly healthy, but also in their mentality where they agreed with all of the general healthy habits. Hence, it is hoped that Malaysians will keep getting healthy and healthier by being aware of their own health and living a healthy lifestyle.

In this project, we were required to select a topic and perform an in-depth case study regarding our selected topic. After some discussions, my group members and I have mutually agreed that the topic of our case study shall be "Health Awareness of Malaysians.".

All of us have agreed to study about this topic because we felt like there were much information to look into and analyse. Besides, we also thought that the conclusion of our topic would be meaningful and helpful to anybody who reads through our case study report. While searching for information regarding our topic, we managed to find some interesting statistics stating that back in 2015, not only nearly 7.5 million people around the globe were obese, but also 5.3 million adults in Malaysia were overweight. Seeing these absurd amounts of people being unhealthy, we started to ask ourselves "Are Malaysians aware about the importance of staying healthy?". Thus, this was the main question we all had in our minds while working on this case study.

Throughout the process of analyzing and writing the report, we were faced with some challenges, especially because of the recent pandemic, most of our group members went back to their respective homes and hence, we were not able to do many face to face meetings for discussion. However, we improvised and solved this issue by utilizing communication platforms such as Whatsapp to communicate and even had a meeting by using Zoom for a video conferencing session.

Apart from communication issues, we also had another issue regarding the functions of RStudio. This is because it was the first time that any of us had used the R Language for an assignment and hence nobody among us were very familiar with the language. However, all of us eventually read through the slides provided by Dr Chan and together with some help from the all-knowing Google, we were able to pull through and successfully created every plots and graphs required according to the scoring rubric. As a result, I was able to improve my knowledge regarding the R language because of this project and I am very grateful to have been given this golden opportunity to learn.

After doing some analysis on our collected data, we realized that most of our respondents were university students aged around 20 years old and hence, we have decided that the results of our study would only be accurate in context of health awareness among Malaysian young adults instead of all Malaysians. This might be due to the aggressive spreading of our survey forms in university-related Whatsapp groups, causing most of our respondents to be students. It might have been a minor mistake but we decided to continue to utilize our data by changing the context of our topic to Malaysian young adults. Anyway, our analysis showed us that Malaysian young adults were mostly healthy, with healthy BMI's although there are a few individuals who were slightly underweight, some who are overweight, and very few who are obese. Overall is was a healthy mix of physiques among people of that age but it could be better if there were even more individuals with healthy BMI's. Hence, we concluded that Malaysian young adults are aware about the importance of staying healthy.

After we were done with our reports, we immediately proceeded to preparing some slides for our presentation video. Due to this pandemic, in-class presentations were no longer a choice and hence, we had to improvise by recording our presentation as a video. It took us awhile to figure out how we were gonna make our presentation video but eventually we settled on using Zoom. Each of the presenters shared their screen when they were presenting their parts and all our webcams were open in order to let Dr Chan see who was presenting. The conference session was recorded and that video was used as our presentation video. By going through the process of making this video, I was able to learn about the various functions of Zoom and am now more prepared for future online video conferences thanks to this project.

All in all, this was an amazing learning experience for me as I was able to expand my knowledge greatly and am now a step closer to being a well rounded student. I sincerely appreciate the efforts of all my group members for giving their all into completing this project and I am looking forward to working together with all of them again in the near future. I also want to thank Dr Chan for always providing helpful guidance and tips throughout the time of working on the project. Even though Dr Chan might be busy helping other students or focusing on his own work, he would always reply our messages and provide the most useful tips in order for us to complete our tasks smoothly. I hope that there will be another chance to be taught by Dr Chan again in the future.