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Data collection for a doctoral study among natives living abroad: revisiting the challenges and strategies undertaken

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Abstract

This paper is based on the first author’s PhD research data collection experiences conducted with his country people who work and live as migrant workers in the production sector in Malaysia. The data collection process is a crucial component in doctoral studies as there is a need to ensure that the data collected is representative, reliable and unbiased. The main objective of this PhD data collection was to understand the economic and social well-being of the migrant workers in the light of the economic and social well-being approaches. In exploring those issues, there were many challenges that the first author faced during data collection (between October 2016 and April 2017). This paper divulges these practical experiences and limitations of this data collection. The notable challenges and limitations were difficult to identify study locations and undocumented migrant workers, time constraint, the difficulty of sampling from a large number of the estimated population, matter of confidentiality and rapport building, lack of cooperation, high field cost, the possibility of false data, language barrier and scared of harassment and personal protection. In addition, the paper discusses the strategies undertaken for better capture of the economic and social well-being. The experiences learnt from this data collection process can be a valuable guideline for the researchers who intend to do further research in a similar context.

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Fig. 1

Source: Hamid, Hung and Rahim (2017)

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Source: Developed by authors

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Change history

  • 18 December 2021

    Affiliation of the first and second author was corrected

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge all of the participants of this research and the authority of the University of Malaya for permission to conduct this research.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Southeast Asian Studies, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

    MD. Mohsin Reza & Thirunaukarasu Subramaniam

  2. Department of Social Work, Jagannath University, Dhaka, Bangladesh

    MD. Mohsin Reza

  3. Institute of Social Welfare and Research, University of Dhaka, Dhaka, Bangladesh

    M. Rezaul Islam

  4. Department of Social Work, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa

    M. Rezaul Islam

  5. Academic Fellow, School of Social Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia

    M. Rezaul Islam

Authors
  1. MD. Mohsin Reza
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  2. Thirunaukarasu Subramaniam
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  3. M. Rezaul Islam
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to M. Rezaul Islam.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest. Ethical Considerations This study has taken approval from the University of Malaya Research Ethics Committee (UMREC) (Reference no. UM. A/Z/425/12 on 23 September 2016).

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants in the study.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in the study involving human participants were following the ethical standards of the University of Malaya Research Ethics Committee (UMREC) (Reference no. UM. A/Z/425/12 on 23 September 2016) and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Reza, M.M., Subramaniam, T. & Islam, M.R. Data collection for a doctoral study among natives living abroad: revisiting the challenges and strategies undertaken. Qual Quant 56, 2783–2802 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-021-01244-1

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