A Study and Monitoring the Drive of the National Strategy Implementation: A Case Study of the National Strategy on Creating Opportunities and Social Equality Regarding the Urgent Issue of the Aging Society

Abstract

The objectives of this research were to study and monitor the drive of the National Strategy implementation on creating opportunities and social equality in order to propose the practical guidelines for the concerned agencies and the stakeholders, which primarily focused on the problem of the aging society, one of the fifteen urgent issue that must be concretely driven within the first five years of the National Strategy. This research is also aimed to study the roles of the Office of the National Economic and Social Development Council (NESDB) in the view of the stakeholders. The methodology of this research was a convergent parallel mixed methods. 456 copies of questionnaires were sent to all 76 provinces, 6 copies per each province and 173 copies were responded and returned. The data was analyzed using the mean, percentage, and standard deviation. For qualitative research, 55 people from various groups that related to the areas consisted of the highest amount of elderly population according to the National Statistical Office 2017 such as Phrae, Uttaradit, Uthai Thani, Phichit, and Lampang were invited to join the focus group discussion. Content analysis and inductive methods were employed to analyze the data. The results showed that the implementation of the strategic plan in various stages was conducted at a “moderate” level which was consistent with the information from the focus group discussion. The key practical guidelines suggested that the public relations activities to all concerned agencies at the provincial level should be increased, academic support should be highly promoted, the staff should be developed on the knowledge of new plan making techniques, the database system of the elderly population in the country should be able to accessed and shared by any government agencies, the agencies from the local level should be integrated and cooperated as one plan, all level of the staff should be trained on the use of eMENSCR system, and NESDB should visit frontline offices in various areas to provide the advice, create the understanding, and build up the confidence in working to frontline staff. The benefits of this research were the obtained information and guideline of the drive the National Strategy on creating opportunities and social equality regarding the urgent issue of the aging society.