BACKGROUND
The devaluation of the Thai baht in July 1997 and the unexpected onset
of the Asia crisis led to the realization that with the initial May 1997
benchmark survey, the project was positioned to track the impact of the
crisis on households and businesses, to see beneath the macro aggregates,
so to speak. Financial support was provided by a grant from the Ford Foundation
for a partial resurvey SAMPLE DESIGN
In May 1998 one-third of the original sample of villages was resurveyed
.In each of the four survey provinces or chagwats, 4 subcounties or tambons
selected at random from the 12 original tambons of the cross sectional
1997 survey. One exception causing random replacement: a single tambon
per changwat was purposefully selected and reserved for the monthly
survey that began in August 1998. Additional NICHD and NSF Funding
have continued these ongoing resurveys in exactly the same villages (and
for virtually the same households) as for 1998. With the appropriate sub-sample
of the initial 1997 cross sectional survey population, these constitute
at present a five year household and business
panel: 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001. Note that with the inclusion of
the monthly survey tambon, 43% of the households in the initial 1997 cross
section continue to be re-interviewed. In addition to the household instruments,
the resurveys of headmen and village
institutions were continued, and in 2000, the BAAC groups.
COLLECTION AND PROCESSING
NOTES
The household, key informant, institution, and BAAC instruments of the
1997 resurvey were modified slightly. For example, questions on income,
consumption, assets, borrowing, lending, and so on were asked as before.
The timing was altered, asking about changes in the past year, and comparing
the past year to the year before, for example. In 1999 an additional battery
of questions on household businesses was added to the household instrument.
In 2000 BAAC groups were interviewed for the second time. The instruments
themselves are available in this part of the archive.
In 1998, the first resurvey, no records
of the previous 1997 interviews were used (other than village and household
rosters). But discrepancies in household level responses across years
were noted subsequently, and in 1998 onward there are consistency checks
in the field. For example, households are asked about assets purchased
or sold during the year and the current number. If this cannot be reconciled
after the interview with the previous year's tally, then the household
is asked about the previous year's answer until discrepancies are resolved.
Discrepancies between 1997 and 1998 were also resolved subsequently.
For each resurvey, one team of 14
people moves from tambon to tambon in each province, that is, one
team per province. The surveys are done, starting at the beginning of
May, and take up to five to six weeks. Village headmen are alerted in
advance, and provide food and lodging in the local area. The first 1998
resurvey used enumerators hired largely from local branches of Ratchapak.
There is one week of training at a central site and one week of training
in the field. From the second resurvey onward, the teams consist primarily
of seasoned enumerators from the monthly micro survey, as this is usually
a time of relative inactivity in those villages, the dry season. As the
enumerators of all resurveys are hired locally, they speak the local dialects
of Thai, including Lao and Kemer.
Data from resurvey 1998 and 1999
(check) were entered in Bangkok on the ISSA- LAN data entry system. From
2000 onwards the data are entered directly onto an ACCESS data entry system.
This allows direct entry of the open-ended Thai responses, and hence double-blind
checks can be implemented not just for numeric answers but also for the entire
instrument.
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