Compare methods
Review your selected methods side by side; rows that differ are highlighted.
| Key-Informant Interview× | Free Listing× | |
|---|---|---|
| Field | Anthropology | Anthropology |
| Family | Process / pipeline | Process / pipeline |
| Year of origin≠ | 1979 | 1988 |
| Originator≠ | Ethnographic interviewing tradition (Spradley; codified by Bernard) | Cognitive anthropology tradition (formalized by Weller & Romney; Borgatti) |
| Type≠ | Purposive in-depth interviewing of especially knowledgeable or well-positioned community members | Elicitation procedure for the items and salience of a cultural domain |
| Seminal source≠ | Bernard, H. R. (2017). Research Methods in Anthropology: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches (6th ed.). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN: 9780759112421 | Weller, S. C., & Romney, A. K. (1988). Systematic Data Collection. Qualitative Research Methods Series 10. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. ISBN: 9780803930742 |
| Aliases | Key Informant Interviewing, Cultural Expert Interview, Knowledgeable Informant Interview, Specialized Informant Interview | Free Lists, Free-List Task, Free Recall Listing, Freelisting |
| Related | 4 | 4 |
| Summary≠ | The key-informant interview is a purposive in-depth interviewing technique in which the ethnographer works closely with a small number of especially knowledgeable or well-positioned community members rather than a representative sample. Key informants are people who, by experience, role, or position, can articulate cultural knowledge a typical member could not. The method centers on selecting such people well, building genuine rapport, eliciting their expertise through ethnographic questioning, and cross-checking what they say against other informants and observations to guard against bias. | 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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