Asia Pacific region - aprc-research

PROFILE
Transition and transformation
AMSRS founding member and Fellow David Bottomley has conducted research in urban and
rural China for more than 20 years.
‘
I
am fortunate that my work takes me to
interesting places,’ writes AMSRS Fellow
David Bottomley in one of his annual
Christmas letters to family and friends. Over
the years, these Christmas letters have drawn
heavily on the illustrated reports he prepares
for clients after fieldwork excursions in China
and Myanmar.
Bottomley, who is founder of the Hong Kong
company Asia Marketing Research Directions
(AMRD), was based in Hong Kong from 1986 to
2008. One of his first research projects involved a
taste test in a restaurant with snakes on the menu.
The friends of the interviewers he employed were
caught at the back door selling his imported beer
taste samples.
Over the past 25 years, Bottomley has seen
China race through its industrial revolution. More
recently, he has made bi-annual trips to China
to oversee the China in Transition to a Market
Economy study, which commenced in March 2000
and wound up in the middle of last year having
conducted about 50,000 face-to-face interviews in
every province of China, other than Tibet.
During his visits to China he has accompanied
interviewers into many homes. These trips were
often undertaken to pre-test questionnaires or
obtain a snapshot impression of the fieldwork.
‘Fieldwork supervision and checking needs to
be far more intensive and pre-planning in the office
is far more critical in Asia than in countries where
market research is well-established,’ he wrote in
the October 2001 edition of Research News.
Bottomley’s illustrated reports on these fieldwork
trips – in many ways, an exegesis on the main
research report - document gradual improvements
in the standard of living in regional and
rural China. They’re colourful reports that paint a
vivid picture of what it’s like living in China and are
scattered with amusing anecdotes about the challenges
for researchers – as Bottomley notes, ‘there
are always little adventures in fieldwork’.
Over a series of reports, his observations about
the improved standard of living have included better
and brighter light fittings, pictures on the walls,
flat renovations and apartment size – along with
the speed and comfort of China’s rail system. One
thing that hasn’t improved, much to Bottomley’s
chagrin, is the pollution. Invariably his reports end
with a note of relief that he’s returned to the clean
air and blue skies of Hong Kong.
Bottomley made a point of accompanying
interviewers during the entire fieldwork experi-
David Bottomley tries his hand at hawking in Taunggyi market, Myanmar
ence. He would put many younger researchers to
shame, climbing the stairs (or risking the ride in
a dubious lift) to the top of multi-storey apartment
buildings along with the interviewers, as he has
always insisted that they commence their door
knocking for pre-planned calls on the top level
of the building.
‘Without that instruction,’ Bottomley says,
‘Interviewers might get too many ground and
lower level flats.’
He writes with humility in his 2009 report,
‘Usually, on these trips, I walk up and down with
the interviewers but lazy from the previous day’s
travel, I let the interviewers do all the climbing until
they obtained an interview. Then they rang me, and
I went up to attend the interview.’
He notes in his reports other sampling challenges,
such as ‘what is a household when four
dwellings are adjacent and share a courtyard’
In Myanmar, sampling challenges have been
compounded by the fact that precise population
figures remain uncertain. The most recent government
census was conducted back in 1983 and
the government places the growth rate at 2.02
per cent to give a current estimate of 57.5 million,
but researchers and business people have their
own estimates.
On the other hand, Bottomley notes where data
are available for ‘committee districts’ in Chinese
cities, it provides the penultimate stratum for his
household sampling procedure.
‘A functional definition of a village in China is
that it contains friendly people, willing to help find
those who live in the homes our local supervisors
have pre-selected, that interviews seldom start
with less than eight people present, perhaps
double that number, and that “grandpa” [AKA Bottomley]
gets a baby placed in his arms. The latter is
hazardous. Diapers/nappies are not known in such
places. Babies wear pants split on the backside.
I like babies but I don’t trust their inner controls.
So far, over the years, no accidents – but I limit my
exposure to about five minutes!’
He notes that during one interview in 2009,
student characters kept popping in and out of the
four doors off the central lounge area ‘like an old
fashioned three-act comedy’.
In stark contrast to nursing infants and feigning
disinterest in curious neighbours, over the years
Bottomley’s associates have had to diplomatically
negotiate their way through Chinese censorship
controls to get authorisation for his studies. However,
it is 10 years since he had any interviewers
arrested for asking suspicious questions about
such things as employment.
Bottomley and his team have sometimes
succeeded in getting Chinese communities to
participate in their surveys by saying, ‘we’re not
government, we’re friends!’
In between trips to China and Myanmar over
the past couple of years, Bottomley (who is now
86) has resumed the post-graduate studies he
first undertook back in 1948 after which he was
‘captured into market research for 60-odd years’.
He completed a second Masters at Melbourne University
in 2009. He is uncertain if he might complete
his PhD in the history of science education at Curtin
University’s Science, Mathematics and Education
Centre before he turns 90.
‘I’m enraptured with being an historical detective.
History is full of surmises and contradictions
to unravel. Life’s fun!’
8 Research News March 2011