Russel-Research-Method-in-Anthropology

Nonprobability Sampling and Choosing Informants 209
TABLE 8.6
Agreement among Individuals and Estimated Validity of Aggregating
Their Responses for Different Samples
Validity
Agreement 0.80 0.85 0.90 0.95 0.99
0.16 10 14 22 49 257
0.25 5 8 13 28 148
0.36 3 5 8 17 87
0.49 2 3 4 10 51
SOURCE: S. C. Weller and A. K. Romney, Systematic Data Collection, p. 77. 1988. Reprinted by permission
of Sage Publications.
which ones to attend. Kiš developed a cultural domain test of ‘‘reasons to
attend a funeral’’ and administered it to 30 informants. The results showed
that there was, indeed, a consensus about this domain of funeral culture, so
Kiš focused on the most knowledgeable informants, as determined by the consensus
analysis, for his in-depth, ethnographic interviews.
Caution: If you use consensus analysis to find knowledgeable informants,
watch out for the shaman effect. People who have very specialized knowledge
about some field may be very different in their knowledge profile from people
in the mainstream—that is, shamans. In fact, it is to the advantage of shamans
everywhere, whether their knowledge is about curing illness or making money
on the stock market, to protect that knowledge by keeping it maximally different
from mainstream knowledge. The bottom line: Use consensus analysis to
find the highly knowledgeable informants, but never pass up the chance to
interview a shaman.
Lots more about consensus analysis in chapter 11 on cultural domain analysis.
Paying Informants
Finally, there’s the issue of whether to pay informants, and if so, how
much? If you are studying people who are worth millions of dollars, paying
them is inappropriate. You can’t possibly pay them enough to compensate
them financially for their time. Better to make a donation to a charity that they
support. This will vary from case to case, but the general rule, for me at least,
is that if you want to interview people, they should be paid at the local rate
for their time. And speaking of interviews. . . .