Malaysia is very lacking in terms of carrying out research and studies. It is no surprise to me that Malaysian mentality has never been at par with its modern technology and facilities like KLCC, KLIA, Internet HotSpot, etc. In case some of you are still not aware, those technologies are imported from developed countries. Malaysia is effectively plagiarizing, except that we pay those countries to allow us to plagiarise. Hence it is legal and we can brag about them and use them to justify that Malaysia is towards becoming a developed nation.
But let’s face it, we Malaysians are no cleverer nor nicer than our fellow Indonesians, Thais, Burmese and other developing nations. We have pickpockets even in KLCC, our public toilets are far from dry and clean, our drivers are extremely impolite, and the list goes on and on. How are we to overcome this? How can we be proud with the KLCC Twin Tower when we have our men committing rape and murder against a Muslim lady who was dressed modestly and according to Islam?
This is where the importance of research and study comes into picture. We need people to ask questions to the public. We need journalists to conduct surveys on what are the trends in teenagers’ behavior today and why. We need psychologists to come out with questionnaires to find out what the average stress level of a Malaysian adult is, and the implication of it. We need scientists to convert these data into information that can help policy makers to address alarming issues such as increasing crime rate, road gangsterism, rape and incest, so on and so fort. And last but never the least, we need free and reliable media to publish these informations to create awareness among the public. But Malaysia does not have all this.
Here in New Zealand, there are people from non-profit organizations, standing by the pedestrian road everyday without fail, to conduct surveys. In return for the information that they get from the person answering the surveys, they give free shopping vouchers worth 5 or 10 dollars. Some surveys would even pay cash. This shows how the society here yearns for information from the public in order to create solutions that can actually work.
We often ask ourselves, at least I did, what makes a university good. The answer is Research. No wonder Harvard, Oxford and many other universities in the U.S. always top in their ranking, considering that Americans research on every single matter that comes to mind, matters that we are either too arrogant to be bothered about, or too simple for our “complex” mind to notice. For example, they did a survey on what parents’ worst nightmare is. It turned out to be addiction to PS2 video game; not alcoholism nor underage sex. At least, now the public knows the magnitude of influence video games have on teenagers’ attitude.
Most of us never realized the importance of research and surveys. Even if we realize, it would be in regard to business marketing only, and nothing beyond that. But this is not true. The secret behind effective public policy is comprehensive research. Without it, the policy doesn’t hit the target and doesn’t solve the issues at hand.
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nz, policy
Posted at: 01:57 AM | Add Comment
