The population of this research were the
founders of northeastern community enterprises, all
of which had been in continuous production. They
were separated into two product groups:
1. Processed Food
2. Handicrafts
The number of samples was equal to the
number of the population. There were 1,076 members
who provided the data (316 were involved with
processed food and 760 with handicrafts). There were
2 sources of primary data: questionnaires and
in-depth interviews. From those who completed the
questionnaires, only 80 were purposely chosen to be
interviewed because of limited time and funds. More
qualitative data was taken from the in-depth
interviews to complement the quantitative data.
The Scope of the Study
The scope of this research was to study and
collect data from community enterprise members in
the northeast of Thailand. These members were the
leaders of food or handicraft enterprises which had
been in continuous production over recent years. The
research received 2 years of funding (July 2003-
June 2005) from the Thailand Research Fund and
data collection took place during 2004.