ECHO - Vietnam

The ECHO Vietnam project evaluated the applicability of ECHO, an open-ended survey technique, to the study of verbally expressed behavioral norms and feelings of Vietnamese. During the summer of 1968, 319 subjects from the following populations were surveyed Popular Forces, Regional Forces, Army of the Republic of Vietnam, RVN Navy enlisted men and women, Catholic and Buddhist men and women in DaNang and Saigon, Saigon school children, and Chieu Hoi Ralliers. Three question forms were used to elicit responses about good and bad acts 1 of persons like the respondent and 2 of American advisors, and 3 responses about good and bad events that could happen. Associated questions were asked about sources of approval of good acts and disapproval of bad acts and about causes of good and bad events. Four administration methods were compared 1 group written, 2 self-administered written, 3 tape-recorded oral, and 4 interviewer-written oral. It was concluded that 1 the ten repetitions of the ECHO question can be reduced to seven or five without important loss of information 2 conditional data differentiate among subcultures more precisely than do behavioral norms, 3 more sophisticated techniques are desirable for analyzing ECHO data, 4 ECHO is best used in combination with traditional methods, and 5 ECHO results are internally consistent and consistent with results from traditional methods. Some hypotheses for further ECHO research are suggested.