Dr Noppadol Kannikar, the director of Abac Poll and one of Thailand's leading pollsters, is taking the business of gauging public opinion to the regional cross-border level. The first-ever Asean Poll, covering Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore, is expected to be released early next year.
"We've reached a preliminary agreement with partner institutes such as the Philippines' Social Weather Stations (SWS) and Malaysia's University of Utar.
"In addition, Dr Mahar Mangahas of SWS has been helping us to network with other units in the other Asean countries. We also expect Vietnam to join later on.
"Each of the national partner institutes will take about 1,000 samplings to gauge public perceptions on topical economic, political and other issues such as enforcement of laws and justice, cultural diversity in the Asean region or economic integration [under the Asean Economic Community or AEC programme].
"We'll also focus on Asean consumers, their lifestyles, spending patterns, as well as their confidence in the economic outlook or their income stability.
"Or we could gauge Asean population's confidence in the pace of economic recovery or their expectation of the 2015 single market, which will lead to freer flow of trade and investment across national borders.
"The Asean Poll is also aimed at serving international investors targeting the vast Asean population, as well as those planning to create an Asean brand identity.
"The first poll should be done in the first quarter of next year to provide a comprehensive interconnected picture of the first five Asean countries," says Dr Noppadol, who will be coordinating the management of Asean Poll from Cornell University in New York.
A 13-year veteran of Abac Poll, part of Thailand's Assumption University, Noppadol, who already has a PhD, will be doing what he calls a "post-doctoral master's degree" at Cornell, starting later this year.
"It's a scholarship for a public administration programme at Cornell, where I will focus on cross-border policy research to complement the undertaking of the Asean Poll. I'm prepared to work the two time zones, New York and Bangkok, using teleconference and other communication technologies.
"At Abac Poll, we have a staff of 70 plus another 200-300 field workers. They will be working with counterpart institutes in other Asean countries to produce the Asean Poll.
"In the meantime, the Abac Poll will continue to focus on Thai politics and related public opinions. The Asean Poll will initially focus on regional social innovation, consumers and business analysis. In addition, we have been doing the Gross Domestic Happiness (GDH) index on a monthly basis since 2006. The latest Jun indicator is over 6 out of the base of 10, so the Thai people in general are still somewhat happy despite the ongoing political challenges.
"For the Thai population, we've found that early adopters of HM the King's sufficiency economic philosophy are 4-5 times happier than those who have not adopted it.
"We also plan to do an Asean happiness index, which could also be based on our GDH index.
"In my opinion, the Asean happiness index should cover quality of life, consumption, the environment, social justice, education, physical and mental health and other issues in the region," he says.