Illiteracy in Bangladesh (original) (raw)

2001, Advances in Developing Human Resources

A cooperative research project between a major university in the United States and the University of Chittagong (in Bangladesh) focused on attempting to identify desired managerial behaviors in Bangladesh for each of three types of businesses. However, there were some concerns. First, although the chosen instrument had been validated in many countries (47), it had been validated within a single company (IBM). Second, the only validated form of the instrument was an English version. Although this was not seen as a problem for those in management positions in major companies, it was seen as a problem for workers and for some of the entrepreneurs. In fact, consideration in regard to translating the instrument into Bengali was rejected, as it was determined that many of those who could not read English could not read any language. The intent was to have the questionnaires administered by four of the major universities in Bangladesh, relying on partner faculty members and their graduate assistants (MBA students) to gather the data. The Bangladesh Principal Investigator (PI) on this project indicated that the assistants would hand deliver the questionnaires, translate the instruments on site for those who could not read English, and also answer any questions asked for clarification. The U.S. university's PI was very uncomfortable with this decision. Many questions arose, such as: Were the assistants qualified to interpret the meaning of the questions? Would each assistant translate the questionnaire in the same way? and, Would they answer individual respondent's questions the same way each time? Each of these questions had the potential to influence the validity of the results.