"The Structure of Market Economy," a series of six half-hour television programs originally produced under a project administered by the Sasakawa Central Europe Fund, was adapted and broadcast in Cambodia following a similar localization project in Vietnam in FY 1996.
In FY 1997, the first year of the project, the series and its accompanying textbooks were translated and edited, a pre-broadcast survey on viewers' understanding of market economy was carried out, and the first broadcasts were made. Over the two years of the project, a total of 20,000 copies of the text were printed and distributed to students, businessmen and government officials in seven regions of the country, including Phnom Penh, Sianoukville, Kampong Cham and Battambang.
In order to measure the effect of the program once it went to air, a pre-broadcast survey was conducted with the cooperation of Regent College, the first private university in Phnom Penh. Some 400 sample viewers in the seven target regions were chosen to take part in the test-style survey to gauge the extent of their basic understanding of market economy. One of the additional benefits of the project was that the implementation of this survey provided a valuable opportunity for the Cambodian educators involved to develop their expertise in conducting field research and compiling reports.
In Phnom Penh, the program was broadcast twice a week, on Monday evenings and Friday afternoons, from February 16 to March 27, 1998. The FY 1998 stage of the project then focused on the post-broadcast survey, in which responses were gathered from 340 of the sample viewers who took part in the pre-broadcast survey. The survey results showed that, for viewers in all age brackets, "scores" rose to 150-200 percent of those of the pre-broadcast survey. This confirms that the project achieved its primary objective of promoting fundamental understanding of market economy among the general public of Cambodia.
A report of the project, including the findings of the survey, was compiled by National Television of Cambodia and submitted to the Cambodian Ministry of Information and Culture and Ministry of Education. The report identifies the production of similar educational television programs with accompanying texts, and the cultivation of the human resources required, as important tasks for the future. Such increased interest, both by the Cambodian media in producing educational programs and by the Cambodian government in promoting popular education, may also be counted among the project's welcome results.