The Data Collection Method

4.4.1 Secondary Data

Zikmund (2000: 124) defines secondary data as the “data gathered and recorded by someone else prior to (and for purposes other than) the current needs of the researcher, and these data are usually historical, already assembled, and do not require access to

respondents or subjects.” Kervin (1992) also points out that secondary data may be either raw data or compiled data which have received some form of selection or summarising. Moreover, these kinds of data, both quantitative and qualitative, can be used in both descriptive and explanatory research (Saunders et al., 2003).

The secondary data required to provide the foundation of knowledge for this study include the current situation of FDI in the ASEAN4 countries, and the Thai government investment policies. This information has been obtained from ASEAN statistics yearbooks, BOI yearbooks, the BOI annual economic reports, and reports of the Bank of Thailand.

Although secondary data provided a foundation of background knowledge for this study, it was not sufficient on its own. Certain necessary information was not publicly available, or had not been gathered. For the present investigation it was essential, therefore, if the objectives were to be achieved, to obtain additional unpublished primary data.

4.4.2 Primary Data

The present researcher has been fortunate in being granted access by the Thailand Board of Investment (BOI) to an unpublished database of IJV companies operating in Thailand. The BOI is the government institution with primary responsibility for overseeing and promoting FDI in Thailand. It enjoys high national status and directly advises the Thai government on investment policy. Although mention has been made of the fact that state- provided statistics and other information can be unreliable, it is very unlikely to be the case in this instance. The present researcher has already noted that it would be unusual and unwise for a government with a fairly free press to risk distorting raw information, not least because it itself needs to know what the real situation is.

The BOI database has not only been crucial in supplying contact information for IJVs to be surveyed, but has also provided much other information not previously available to the scholarly community. These data are analysed in this study in terms of the patterns of IJVs’ activities, distribution, and trends. Specifically, analyses by industrial sector, country of origin, and the ventures’ equity participation have been conducted on this

database in order to fulfil the first objective of this study: to ascertain the characteristics of the activities, distribution, and trends of IJVs in Thailand.

Despite the immense value of the BOI database, it needed to be supplemented by a survey, because information needed did not exist.

De Chernatony (1990) identifies three techniques normally used for collecting primary survey data: personal interviews, telephone interviews, and self-administered questionnaires (mail survey). In respect of primary data collection from IJVs, the mail survey was selected for this study. The main reasons for adopting this method are as follows.

First, a mail survey can reach a geographically dispersed sample simultaneously. “Respondents in isolated areas or those who are otherwise difficult to reach can more easily be contacted by mail” (Zikmund 2000: 201). Since the target respondents, the IJV companies, were located in different locations throughout Thailand, they could all be made equally accessible by employing this method.

Second, this method also demands the least amount of resources (Salant and Dillman, 1994). Mail survey is comparatively low in cost relative to personal interviews and a telephone survey. Given that, in this study, the researcher had limited resources for primary data collection, mail survey was seen as an efficient method for accumulating primary data from the target respondents.

Third, mail survey can be completed whenever the respondent has free time, which improves the likelihood that they will take time to think about the answers (Dillman, 1978). In addition, mail survey can provide more sense of confidentiality. It is easier for most people to answer personal questions in writing than face-to-face. It is a more anonymous tool for providing sensitive and private information to the researcher (Salant and Dillman, 1994). In contrast, collecting primary data by telephone is concentrated in a brief period of time and the respondents have no prior warning. The decision about how to respond must be quick, so the researcher may not get the valid information sought (Faria et

al., 1990). The questionnaire of the present study included a number of questions which

required respondents to think carefully, and some questions they might perceive as sensitive or confidential (for example, assessing the quality of IJV performance or IJV management). Mail survey was thus the best primary data collection method for eliciting these data and items of information from the IJV managers who were the target respondents.

There is also the consideration that a mail survey method is less susceptible to bias from interviewers’ value judgements. This kind of error is normally only a problem with telephone and personal interviews (Dillman, 1978). Finally, since this study needed to be finished in a restricted period of time and the researcher was conducting the research alone, mail survey was preferable to the personal or telephone interview, which would have required a great deal more time for collecting data from the target respondents.

In short, time, resources, the characteristics of the research samples, and the benefits of the mail survey over other methods persuaded the researcher to choose mail survey for the collection of primary data from IJVs in Thailand. If none of the already mentioned constraints of time, resources, and the working environment of the respondents had applied, extended personal or telephone interviews might have provided a more in-depth understanding through two-way communication. Since, however, they did apply, mail survey was found to be the appropriate method for this study. Nevertheless, the drawbacks of the mail survey method should not be ignored, and a number of earlier scholars have also drawn attention to them (Dillman, 1978; Jobber, 1991; Salant and Dillman, 1994; Zikmund, 2000).