A Comparative Research on Third Sector Governance in Asia (Part 1) : Its Qualitative Research Method

A comparative research work was undertaken on ‘Asia’s Third Sector: Governance for Accountability and Performance’ with the involvement of at least two dozen researchers in six participating countries. It resulted in a book (Comparative Third Sector Governance in Asia, Springer, 2008) comprising eleven comparative chapters, and six country chapters. This is a two-part discussion of the Guide and the research methodology. Part 2 of the discussion, ‘A Comparative Research on Third Sector Governance in Asia (Part 2): The Organizational Survey Protocol’ (available on SSRN) discusses the organizational data collection protocol. This piece (Part 1), discusses the literature search, content analyses, and the survey of ‘legal experts’ and ‘key informants’. It is divided in six sections: Project overview and context; Research Design; Research Practicalities; Method in Action; Practical Lessons Learned; and Conclusions. The ‘protocol’ is added in the discussion so any interested researcher may use it to create new knowledge about governance of the third sector organizations in any other country to compare it to the original analyses as available in the book (Samiul Hasan and Jenny Onyx, eds. Comparative Third Sector Governance in Asia, Springer, 2008)