Compare methods

	Net-Map (Influence Network Mapping)	Ethnographic Interview	Participatory Rural Appraisal
Field	Anthropology	Anthropology	Anthropology
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	2010	1979	1994
Originator	Eva Schiffer (with Jennifer Hauck)	James P. Spradley	Robert Chambers and collaborators
Type	Participatory tool for collecting social/influence network data and facilitating learning	Structured developmental sequence of interview questions for eliciting cultural knowledge	Family of participatory field appraisal and planning methods
Seminal source	Schiffer, E., & Hauck, J. (2010). Net-Map: collecting social network data and facilitating network learning through participatory influence network mapping. Field Methods, 22(3), 231–249.	Spradley, J. P. (1979). The Ethnographic Interview. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. ISBN: 9780030444968	Chambers, R. (1994). The origins and practice of participatory rural appraisal. World Development, 22(7), 953–969.
Aliases	Net-Map, Influence Network Mapping, Participatory Influence Mapping, Influence Tower Mapping	Spradley Interview, Developmental Research Sequence Interview, Ethnographic Interviewing, Domain Elicitation Interview	PRA, Participatory Learning and Action, Participatory Rural Appraisal Methods, PLA
Related	3	3	2
Summary	Net-Map is a participatory, paper-based tool developed by Eva Schiffer for collecting social and influence network data while helping participants reflect on the networks they are part of. Sitting around a large sheet, participants name the actors involved in a goal or process, draw and label the links between them by type (for example funding, information, or command), and then stack physical 'influence towers' — disks or blocks — beside each actor to show how much power that actor holds. The session produces both a rich qualitative discussion and a quantitative, analyzable network with weighted nodes and typed, directed ties.	The ethnographic interview, formalized by James Spradley, is a deliberately staged conversation whose goal is to discover how an insider categorizes and talks about their own cultural world rather than to test the researcher's categories. It proceeds through a developmental research sequence of question types — broad grand-tour questions, fine-grained descriptive questions, structural questions that probe how knowledge is organized, and contrast questions that surface the distinctions informants draw between terms. The point is not a list of facts but a reconstructed map of meanings expressed in the informant's own native terms.	Participatory rural appraisal is a growing family of approaches and methods that enable local people to share, enhance, and analyze their own knowledge of their lives and conditions, and to plan and act on it. Associated above all with Robert Chambers, PRA reverses the conventional research relationship: outside facilitators hand over the stick, and community members themselves do the mapping, ranking, diagramming, and analysis that drive planning and action.