This project studies two contexts, so it requires all activities to be in two places and two languages. Though based in London, I made three visits to Thailand to collect data. The first round of data collection was made in the first year of study; during this round exploratory interviews were done in Thailand. The purpose of doing the
interviews is to understand real-life situations that cannot be grasped through
document study. It was worthwhile as I gained data that helped to identify problems at the NAT. Along these paths of data collection and analysis in Thailand and the UK, I was able to see that a single thing can be perceived or done differently depending on people and their ways of seeing the world and living their lives.
The second round and the main data collection started in September 2013, in the second year, and lasted until the beginning of 2014. First, interviews were held with
UK interviewees, including archivists, academics, and users. The participants were informative and willing to contribute to the research. They offered fascinating perspectives and were helpful to the research, despite language barriers sometimes making transcription of the interviews a laborious and time-consuming process.
I did my main data collection in Thailand, which consisted of interviews and surveys, over a period of two and a half months in 2013-14. Apart from information from the interviews and survey obtained, which has been used for comparison, I noticed the distinctions between the two contexts in how the archives approach people and how they give information. I realised that I was exposed to not only archives in two geographical locations but also different cultures that called for different approaches in data collection and analysis. For example, the way I approached people in the UK, though still with recommendations from my supervisors, was more straightforward than in Thailand. In some cases, as with the UK users, I randomly contacted
participants from a users’ community online. In Thailand, it is necessary to establish more familiarity and build relationships with prospective interviewees, as creating and maintaining relationships is an important cultural value. Most interviewees could be approached with recommendations, and I needed to invite them by phone. Some interviewees had implicit attitudes that were not stated outright in the interviews but could be detected in data analysis. This is a reflection that, in Thai culture, some things cannot be said explicitly as readily as in the UK.
A third journey was made to Thailand to do a focus group with the NAT archivists. I also studied more literature that is only available in the country. However, not all the sources mentioned in chapters 3, 4 and 5 on Thailand and Southeast Asia are from these trips. Many of them are from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. The review of literature encouraged me to use multiple libraries in the University of London. This was for me a great pleasure, but more importantly, in this cross-cultural research, I found myself among two
epistemologies, with both Western and Thai scholars discussing Thai society.
This last data collection took place in Thailand in early 2015. I conducted the focus group with the archivists and conducted a few more interviews. The focus group went well, though the same issue of cultural appropriateness seemed to come back. The focus group seemed not to be so suitable for Thai culture. The use of a Western
method where discussion is expected appeared to repeat the exact problem identified in the archives management situation itself – using a Western method in Thai
contexts. That is, the strength of focus group as a methodology is to investigate the dynamic of conversation and exchange of different opinions, which is not a common process in Thai organisational culture.
Translation was another task required in this study. When formulating the questions, I needed to translate all questions and questionnaires into Thai. After gaining data from Thai interviewees and participants, I translated the data from Thai to English for data analysis and writing reports. The translation was not too challenging; however, it was necessary to be careful not to change the original meaning of the participants. Thai language by nature can be less specific than English. For example, omission of the subject or other words is common in Thai, and Thai words have neither different genders nor different endings for singular or plural. The occasional ambiguity that can result needed to be clarified once the data was translated into English. In a way, it helped me to look at the data more deeply by thinking through another language.
Being qualitative research
Being purely qualitative research, it could be argued that this study lacks justification to generalise the broader social phenomenon in that it refers only to a handful of interviewees and participants. I do not claim that this research can give absolute judgement of Thai values and their impacts on the archival situation in Thailand. This research attempts to explain the phenomenon within the limitations of time and scope imposed. For example, the research focuses on the national archives of the UK and Thailand. It cannot claim that each individual would value archives in the same way nor that the whole society would think the same thing. Though the number of
interviewees and survey participants is quite limited, the study tries to understand the tendency of different cultures and different groups, rather than trying to get as large a sample as possible to predict tendencies.