Free Listing
Free listing is a foundational elicitation technique in cognitive anthropology in which informants are asked to name, in any order, all the items they can think of that belong to a cultural domain — for example 'all the kinds of fruit' or 'all the things that can give you a cold.' Aggregating these lists reveals both the content of the domain (which items belong) and the salience of each item (how culturally central it is), inferred from how frequently and how early it is mentioned.
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Sources
- Weller, S. C., & Romney, A. K. (1988). Systematic Data Collection. Qualitative Research Methods Series 10. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. ISBN: 9780803930742
- Borgatti, S. P. (1994). Cultural domain analysis. Journal of Quantitative Anthropology, 4(4), 261–278. link ↗
How to cite this page
ScholarGate. (2026, June 22). Free-Listing Elicitation for Cultural Domains. ScholarGate. https://scholargate.app/en/anthropology/free-listing
Which method?
Set this method beside its closest kin and read them side by side — the library lays the books on the table; the choice is yours.
- Cultural Consensus ModelAnthropology↔ compare
- Cultural Domain AnalysisAnthropology↔ compare
- Pile SortingAnthropology↔ compare
- Triad TestAnthropology↔ compare