Lessons learned from a survey of Myanmar migrant workers: The effect of interviewer and quality of data

Abstract

This study aims to reflect experience in collecting quantitative data from a sample population of Myanmar migrant workers and to highlight the significance of survey interviewers in data collection and quality. The study employed data from the survey “Leaving children with grandparents in Myanmar: Experiences and perceptions of migrants in Samut Sakhon Province in Thailand” which was conducted by the authors. The sample includes 1,324 Myanmar migrants who were working in Samut Sakhon Province during October 2014. To address the second objective of this study, the authors proposed to explore what demographic and socio-economic factors are associated with the feeling of grandparents toward grandchild care and the remittance of 48,000 THB back to grandparents in Myanmar. Binary logistic regressions were used. We found that the demographic and socio-economic factors have significant impact on the positive feeling of grandparents and the remittance of 48,000 THB after the interviewers variable was controlled for in the model. The results suggest the using non-Thai speaking interviewers to collect such data should be closely supervised and monitored to ensure the quality of data collected.