[Music]
Relevance.
We are a growing, a maturing society, and we are very complex, right?
In the current society, where there is so much noise
the greatest concern I have is that sometimes because of the noise,
we dismiss and then we miss our chance improving our knowledge on emerging trends,
so I rely on IPS to go to the ground and surface unbiased scientific evidence,
and then from there, we are in a better position to formulate policies that are relevant and
that are very important to bridge us over to the next phase of our growth
I think IPS is has been very adaptable. It started off focusing mainly more qualitative,
you know, work that would you know tease out trends and flavour and of our social fabric
And then over time when Singapore society became very much more reliant on unbiased data,
IPS then moved full swing into quantitative analysis and data collection.
An entity like IPS which presents objective relevant data to showcase the strengths of
our social fabric to highlight the trends, and very importantly to also highlight the gaps.
So IPS plays an extremely relevant and significant role in our society because it accords to us
the data that we need for an evidence-based perspective towards policy formation.
So I think for IPS, because it services a lot of government ministries. I mean that is the purpose
of an objective academic-based data collection house, right?
It runs into, for the naysayers in our community,
the worry that, oh, it's just serving government's purpose, right?
And I think that's not fair because if you look at the whole expanse of IPS' involvement in social research,
I believe the IPS team covers everything and anything that is relevant to Singapore society.
So I would say, press on, IPS. You are doing an excellent job.
You hold an important space in our community, where we want to help leverage up through unbiased
evidence-based perspectives, and in this space IPS is an important player and important leader.
As society becomes more complex,
I think we will have to learn how to improve on our research methodologies
and our data analysis techniques so that we don't run the danger of just producing top
lines that are same old, same old and easy to surface; very easy to run a regression,
very easy to just do highlights of frequencies. A lot more difficult to learn methodologies that
helps us to flush out I think the emerging trends, right? And when society becomes more complex
we will also need to brace ourselves with more complex methodologies and data analysis skills
so that we don't miss out on the emerging lines that eventually may become norm.
So it's always important for research Enterprises to be ahead of changes.