Expecting Something for Nothing? The Trials, Tribulations, Successes and Pitfalls of Cross-Cultural Data Collection for an IFTDO/UFHRD Funded Comparative Analysis of HRD Practices

Is it possible to engage in research requiring the participation of HRD practitioners from a multitude of nations, without offering individual tangible incentives? This viewpoint shares the experiences of our HRD research team in attempting to gather research data from HRD practitioners across the Globe. Issues that potentially indicate tensions between the worlds of HRD practice and academia are reflected upon in the following account. We suggest HRD practitioner awareness of, and connection with, the associated research has a fundamental influence on the relative successes of data collection methods. A review of our experiences of conducting this data collection follows. Our research was jointly funded by IFTDO (The International Federation for Training and Development Organisations) and UFHRD (The University Forum for HRD)1. We were tasked with conducting a comparative analysis of Human Resource Development (HRD) practices across Africa, Asia and Europe. The guiding research questions addressed in the study involve the scrutiny of the roles, strategies, contribution and driving forces of HRD in each of these three regions. In order to collect relevant data for this research our methods included accessing the following four main sources: • Review of relevant literature — incorporating academic and ‘grey’ sources. • Delphi style panel — set up to determine which countries in Africa, Asia and Europe should be visited to conduct focus groups. • On-line questionnaire — distributed to IFTDO members and other HRD practitioners across the Globe. • Country specific focus groups — with countries as identified by the Delphi-style panel.