4.3 surveys and Analytical Tools 4.3.

1 structured interactions The open-enden and semistructured interviewing techniques discussed above are readily adapted for structured interactions, in which a selected group of people are requested to answer the same series of questions or to perform the same test. These interactions yield comparative data which can be arranged in a matri , a rectangular table in which the response of each informant to each inquiry is given. This matri , modeled after the one shown in table 4.4, can then be used as the basis for various statistical analyses. There are two general forms of structured interactions. !n surveys, selected informants give answer to a number of spesific questions that are either written down in questions or are posed in person by the interviewer. "urveys are the primary tools of sociologists, who see# to gauge the variation in responses between different groups of people in large and comple societies. Through the use of various analytical tools, participans show their cultural preferences and empirical ecological #nowledge by ran#ing ob$ects sorting them into piles based on criteria such as similality or relative quality. %any of these techniques were developed in the 1&'(s by cognitive and linguistic anthropologists who wwere see#ing systematic methods of collecting data which would reveal how people perceive and classify the world around them. "owe of these approaches have been modified for use in participatory rural apprasial by symplifying both the methobology and the analysis of results. "ome fieldwor#ers shun surveys and tas#s, because they consider them an impersonal way of collecting data. They argue that because they are based of brief interactions between the researcher and a number of respondents, it is difficult to establish the rapport that a fieldwor#er usually builds with local people during open conversation and participant observation. )eep these criticisms in mind if you decide to carry out surveys and tas#s as part pf your research. These approaches are most effective when they are employed after you have become better acquainted with the people of a community. !f you have limited time, put emphasis on carrying out the wor# in a participatory way. *esign and carry out the surveys in collaboration with local counterparts with whom you can later analy+e the results. !f participans understand the goals and methods of the study and acquire s#ills they can use in community profects, these structured interactions become much more personal affairs. 4.3., The results of surveys and analitycal tools -our different types of results are obtained by surveys and analytical tools, e emplified by the following questions. There are inventories . /hat are all native plant categories 0 /hat are the names of all the woody plants used for firewood 0 there are ran#ings . among all fruits eaten which are considered to be the best 0 of all herbal remedies for headaches, which are the most effective 0. there are assessments of similarities . in an assortment of ornamental flowers, which are most ali#e 0. do people from one #ind group classify plants in the same way and differentli from other people in the community 0. and there are competancies . accurately identify the curative properties of a series of medicinal plants 0

The more structured an interaction, the more sophisticated are the statistical methods that we can use to analy+e the results. 1ut #eep in mind that a highly structured interview yields data on a very limited part of local #nowladge and ta#es much time and patience on the part of the researcher and local people. "ceptics of these empirical approaches feel that when a tas# removes people from familiar activities and habits, the results are li#ely to be an artifact of the method used. They say for e ample that when you as# someone to identify herbarium specimens, the responses will be affected by the fact that local people are not accustomed to loo#ing at dried plants flattened in two dimensions and removed from their ecological and social conte t. !n response to these doubts, verify if your results are consistent with the data collected through open interview, participant observation, surveys and other tas#s. 2emember that is cross verification allows you to loo# at local #nowledge from several different prespectives, attaining a well-rounded view of how people interact with their environment. 4.3.3 "urveys

There are two types of survey. A questionnaire is used when gathering comparable information from a board range of literate informants, usually in an urban setting. The respndent fills in the questionnaire alone, which implies that there is little or no contact with the researcher. An interview schedule is a set of question, usually written on a prepared form, that guides interviews with literate or non-literate individuals. These forms are used by the researcher in face-to-face interaction with informants, implying some degree of personal rapport. 1oth queationnaries and interview schedules are typically printed on paper, ensuring that the same questions are presented in the same way to all participans. 3ne section of the survey is dedicated to recording the sociological characteristics of each individual, as discussed above in the section on selecting informants. The other parts are devoted to requesting the spesific information that you wish to record. After they survey is completed, you may need to ta#e additional steps to verify and further understand the responses. -or e ample, if you request a list of medicinal plants you will need to ma#e herbarium vouchers of all the species mentioned. !f informants give you the name of fol# illnesses, you may need to hold separate interviews with local curers to document in more detail the symptoms and treatment of each. The surveys of T2A%!4 are prepared by a diverse group of colleagues-health care professionals, researches and local people who focus on herbal remedies used to treat the most important illnesses that affect a specific region. !n some of the surveys, general data are collected on the informants, including their school attendance, living conditions and access to health services. The respondents are as#ed whether the chosen illenes are treated at home, by a traditional curer or by a western medical practitioner. -or conditions treated with household herbal remedies, specific information is requested about the plants employed, preparation, parts used and other ethnobotanical data.

4.3.4 survey questions "urveys usually involve queries that require short responses, often drawn from a set number of options. *ichotomous questions, those which can be answered yes or no, true or false or agree or disagree are common. These are a simple form of multiple choice questions, in which the respondent is given a limited number of possible answers. /henever possible, it is preferable to draw the various possible responses from an emic perspective, that is in a way that reflects local perception and classification of the natural word.
!f these questions are avoided in informal interviewing, why should they be acceptable in survey. %ost researchers agree that is questionnaires are to be used at all, they should be applied toward the end of the pro$ect. This leaves plenty of time at the beginning of field wor# to e perience the culture on its own term and to learn by as#ing open ended, spontaneus questions. 1efore a survey is attempted, the researcher should have an idea of the range of possible answer to a question. *ichotomous and multiple choice questions provide a way of probing more deeply into meters that have already been discussed in free format interactions. Another important element of surveys is the fill in the blan# format, which consist of questions followed by a blan# that interviewer fills in with the answer given by the respondent. !n surveys, these questions are written out and are posed systematically to a selected group of informants. As with dichotomous and multiple choice queries, fill in the blan# questions are posed only after you have gained some idea of local practices and #nowledge and have established raport with informants. As#ing these questions during your first days in a community could lead people into improvising responses to please you or not to appear ignorant. 3nce you have established the grown rules of the research and local counterpart feel comfortable about sharing #nowledge, increasingly precise questions can be posed. 3ne of the main advatages of using short answer queries is that they are much easy to analyse with statistic then the result of open ended interviews. 5onversational responses must be interpreted, ctagori+ed, and coded before they are analy+ed, which is time is consuming and creates the possibility of introducing researcher bias into the result. "urvey answers, and the result of te ts described below, are verbatim responses. The e act words are opinion of the informant can be directly analy+ed with only minimal polishing of the data. "tatisticians rate these various types of queries according to the related concepts of ease of guessing the answer and the information content. -or dichotomous questions, there is 6(.6( change of guessing the right answer. This rate decreases some what with multiple chioce questions and even further with fill in the blan#. Although some speculation is a normal part of any conversational answer, there is little probability than an open ended response would be totally a result of guess word. /hen people are given the opportunity to e press themselves freely, they tend to focus on what they #now. The easier it is to guess an answer, the lower is the information content of the response. -or these reasons, fewer multiple choice and fill in the blan# queries are needed to obtain result that are statically significant than in the case for dichotomous questions. /hen there is a

high probability of guessing an answer, there is also a relatively high chance that agreement between informant is a matter of coinsident, which means that a large number of questions must be as#ed to prove that a result is statistically signifincant. 4.3.6 Analytical Tools 2esearchers use various analytical tools to obtain detailed quantitative data on sub$ect that have emerged during the course of field wor#. -or e ample, they may as# interviewees to ran# fruits from most prefered to least prefered, rate the qualities of various types of firewood or sort of a series flashcard containing the name of animal into piles that reflect perceived similarities in morphology . These e ercises are often combined with interviewing techniques. 7articipants are as#ed to e plain why they prefer a certain type of fruit over another or what the ob$ects in each pile have in common. The tas#s may be integrated in survey, such as when local counterparts are as#ed to compare the properties of various medicinal plants in a structured interview about health care in the community. Although each of the tas#s described below is carried out in a slightly different way, there are some techniques and general advice that apply to all. 8ach analytical tool typically depends on the use of props that can be handled by the participants. These include dried or fresh specimens of plants, pictures of landscape, notecards on which the local names of animals have been written and other visual aids which ensure that interviewer and interviewee are referring to the same ob$ect. These props correspond to te members of a single domain, or class of ob$ects , which is the focus of the research. A set of props might include, for e ample, a do+en types of firewood, ten #inds of bird s#ins or five varieties of corn. Although tas#s can be carried out without props, most researchers believe the best results are achieved with ob$ects that respondents can see and touch rather than $ust thin# about abstractly. 7ay attention to factors that might affect the way peolpe answer, including the limits on their attention span, the quality of the props and the order in which the items are presented. !f the participants become bored, their answers will be less consistent than when they are focused on the tas#. Ta#e this into consideration when choosing how many ob$ects to include in each set, #eeping in mind that for some tas#s the amount of time needed increases rapidly in relation to the number of items included. The sequence of the ob$ects should be randomi+ad before each tas# to minimi+e the possibility that peoples choices are influenced by the order in which they see the items. 5ards can be shuffled,pairs of specimens presented in different sequences and the arrangement of the ob$ects within each set charged. 1e careful that each prop you present is of good quality and is typical of the ob$ect you are see#ing to present. 4ets say that you offer someone a choice between a green banana, a ripe apple and a rotting pear. Their selection will be li#ely to reflect their perception of the maturity of the fruits rather than preference of one species over the others. 1lurry photographs, incomplete specimens and poorly written flashcards all detract from the quality of the data you will obtain. 7ictures should show all the morphological characteristics needed to identify an ob$ect and differentiatie it from other similar things. 1iological specimens should contain most of the features that local people are accustomed to seing. 5ombine

specimens, pictures and other stimuli into a single prop if this increase peoples ability to recogni+e the ob$ect. *o your best to ensure there is no confusion over the identity of each ob$ect. !f you are using name cards, be sure there is consensus about what is referred to by each label. As discussed elsewhere in this manual, many names are polysemic reffering to more than one ob$ect or concept. !n addition, plant and animal manes do not always have a one to one correspondence with scientific species, which means that the researcer may be thin#ing of one organism while the informant is visuali+ing another. !f the tas# assumes that the respondents can recogni+e each specimen without difficulty, as# them to name and describe all the ob$ects before ran#ing or sorting them. !f you are attempting to carry out the tas#s in a scientifically rigorous way, interviews should be held with one individual at a time and with no onloo#ers present. This guarantees that opinion of the interviewee is not swayed by the comments of others and that people who participate in the tas# in the furture do not give pre-conceived answers. There are both formal and informal ways of using the analytical tools presented below. !n the informal approach, e emplifed by participatory rural appraisal, it is costumary to use small sets of items well #nown by all members of the community. These item can be sorted and characteri+ed in a relatively short time. 2esearches are casual in their approach to randoming the order in which ob$ects are presented and are rela ed about having people observe and comment on the tas#. At times, the tas#s are administrated in a single meeting to a large group of people who reach a consensus through discussion or who e press their diverse options by voting. 7rons are used when available but often the e ercises are carried out arally or written on a blac#board. Analysis of results is usually limited to summation of the responses, with little use of statistical approaches. The goal is to stimulate a dialogue with local peolpe about their #nowledge and management of resources or about other sub$ects which havee been chosen by the community.

The formal approach as pioneered by cognitive anthropologists, yields data which is analy+ed using a variety of statistical measures. 7sychologists, linguists and anthropologists who use this approach insist on randomi+ing the squence of the ob$ects and holding each interview in private. 8mphasis is placed on the quality of the props. Although small subsets of items may be used at times, it is more common to carry out e ercises which include all members of a certain domain or category. -or tas# that focus on the classification or use of plant and animal resourches, there can be hundreds of items that ta#e many hours to sort or ran#. The ob$ective is rto discover, in a scientifically rigorous way, how people perceive and classify the natural world.

4.3.' preference ran#ing 3ne of the simplest analytical tools involces as#ing people to thin# of some five to seven items in a category which is the focus of the research or of an issue which is being discussed in the community. 8ach person arranges the items according to personal preference, perceived importance int he community or another criterion. 8ach ran# is given

an integer value with the most important or preferred item being assigned the highest number /henever possible, this order of preferrence is cross chec#ed with data obtained from interviews and other sources to see if there is consistency in the responses. !n preference ran#ing of a few wedely recogni+ed items, the tas# can be carried out orally or can be s#etched on a large piece of paper which everyone can see. As the number of items grows it is preferable to have actual samples in hand and to randomi+e their order before as#ing each participant to ran# then. 7reference ran#ing can be used, for instance to elicit a list of plant resources that people feel are becoming increasingly rare in their communal forests. 8ach participant is as#ed to arrange the plants from least to most scarace. Another application of preference ran#ing is to as# peolpe to ma#e a list of the most valuable non timber forest products in the region and then ran# them in terms of the amount of income they yield. 4.3.9 direct matri ran#ing *irect matri ran#ing is a more comple version of preference ran#ing. !nstead of arranging a series of ob$ects on the characteristic such as value or resirability, informants order them by considering several attributes one at a time. !n other words, preference ran#ing os based on a single dimension whereas direct matri ran#ing draws e plicitly upon multiple dimensions. After choosing a class of ob$ects and defining its members, participants define the good and bad aspects of each. !n the e ample given in table 4.9 people might offer various observations. 4ist these criteria along the left hand si+e of a piece of paper and write the names of the items along the top. To simplify the scoring, rephrase negative statements as positive criteria. 3nce the table is ready, people can ran# the items according to each criterion, using a numerical scale in which the highest number is equal to the best ob$ect and the lowest number to the worst. The results of numerous individual responses can be added together to create a matri that is representative of the community. Alternativelt direct matri ran#ing can be done as a group e ercise in which participants reach consensus on the ran#ing pf each item or vote according to their individual assessments. 4.3.: triadic comparisons !n triadic comparisons, items are presented to participants in sets of three, as e emplified in bo 4.4. after devining the domain and identifying its most important members, triads are set up so that each item appears in every possible combination of three with the other items. After the squence of the triads and the order within each triad are randomi+ed, informants are shown each set of three and as#ed to ran# the items best or worst, most preferred to least preferred or in another comparable way. Alternatively, the participants can $udge the three items on overall similarity, selecting the item which is the most dissimilar to the others or the two that are most similar to each other. 1y posing questions such as ...................., the interviewer can document patterns of similarity based on a particular attribute.

1ecause this test ismore complicated tahn the previous ones, it is a good idea to begin each e ercise with a few sample questions so that the local partisipants can become familiar with the procedure. These questions should be drawn from a sub$ect different from the one you are e ploring so that the answer do not affect the participants performance on the real triadic comparison. "ome interviewers as# respondets to w plain, either during the tas# or after it is finished, the choices they ma#e in specific triads. *epending on whether the triads are being used for ran#ing or for assessing similarity you can pose questions such as why do you thin# these two items are similar0 The responses for similarity comparisons can be tailled in a matri such as the one in figure 4.6. for preference ran#ing, an overall ran#ing for each item is obtained by adding together the ran#s it is given in each triad in which it appears. !n a triadic comparison of four items such as apples, oranges, peaches and pears, each ob$ect appears in three different triads. !f the pears were rated as 3, , and 3 int he three triads in which it appears, its overall rating would be :. 4.3.& paired comparisons !n paired comparisons, interwieweesare shown items which have been arranged in sets of two. 1ased on discussions with the participantsor or on previous interviews inthe community, devine five to ten important options or ob$ects which characteri+e the sub$ect to be e plored. %a#e written notecards for each option or in the case of ob$ects, prepade good quality speciments. 1efore you begin, compose either a list or a matri of all possible combinations, as discussed in bo 4.6. this will allow you to #eep trac# of the responses and to ensure that all pairs are shown during the course of the tas#. After randomi+ing the irder of the pairs, present them to the interviewee, who will choose the one he or she prefers or considers most important.......or another response that is appropriate for the question posed. !n order to gain insight into peoples reasoning, you can as# the paticipants to describe why one option is better or worse than another. !n addition, you can as# if the preferred item has any negative qualities or if the one not chosen has any positive aspects. "ome researches as# for these comments after each choice, whereas others prefer that respondents complete the entire tas# before giving their general observations on the overall pattern that emerges. !f you as# someone to say why they li#e one fruit better than another after each choice, they might respond with statements. !f you as#ed for their opinion after finishing the e ercise, they may be able to synthesi+e these observations into a general statement along the lines of.......... although these conclusions may be obvious for some domains including favorite fruits they often allow both the interviewer and the respondent to discover underlying rules or tendencies that e plain peoples behavior. After the tas# is done, you can as# the participants if they have thought of any additional items or criteria lrft out of the original listing. !f so, these can be merely inserted at the appropriate place in the ran#ing or you can create a new set of possible pairs for the informant to review and comment upon.

3n another day, you can verify the consistency of the answer by as#ing respondents to carry out a preferense ran#ing with the same fruits. A simpler way to chec# is to pose derecly thee question, whether in an interview or in open conversation, that was addressed in the e ercise........ 4.3.1( pile sorting !n the pile sort tas#, partisipan membagi ob$e# dalam nomor grup berdasar#an seluruhan #esamaan materi atau bahan. 7ile sort are usually carried out with cards, which allows large numbers of concrete or abstract things to be classified in a relatively short period of time. After defining the domain that interests you, write the name of all relevant items on small notecards, using large and legible print. !f you are wor#ing with non-literate informants, you will be obliged to use picture cards or real ob$ects, ensuring that they include the #ey features that people use to recogni+e and classify the items. 8ach participant shuffles the cards and then proceeds to ma#e piles according to his or her notion of similarity. !n some cases ypu may want to specify that the items be sorted according to a certain attribute that interests you, such as commercial value, scarcity or utility. "ome researches allow as many piles as the interviewee chooses, whereas others wor#ers restrict the number by as#ing. ;ou can obtain additional information that will help you to interpret the result by as#ing the participants what the ob$ects in a single pile have in common or what differences there are between two separate piles. %ost people do this after all the piles have been formed so that the participants do not change the way they sort in the middle of the e ercise. After the piles have been made, the results arre tabulated in a similarity matri li#e the ones used in triadic and pairwise comparisons. !n order to demonstrate this, lets return to the e ample of home garden produce with which this section began. *raw matri such as the one depicted in figure 4.:, that gives a pairwisw comparison of all these item. 7airs found in the sa,ple pile are scored with a one. !f the two items are found in different piles, the coressponding bo in the matri is filled with a +ero. As additional people complete this tas#, community wide patterns of the perceived similarity between the ob$ects will emerge which can latter be analy+ed using various statistical approaches. 1y comapring the matrices presented in figures 4.6, 4.' and 4.:, you can see that triadic and pairwise comparisons yield more data per person than sorting tas#. -or this reason, ,( or more participants are needed in pile sorting to achieve statistically reliable results, whereas less that 1( are acceptable in triadic and pairwise comparison tas#. There are many variations on the pile sort that add fle ibility to the technique, allowing you to adapt it to your own study. -or e ample, if someone belives that an item belongs in more than one pile, additional cards can be made and placed in the various groupings, effectively allowing peolpe to split their vote. *uring the course of the e ercise, people may thin# of additional items that were left out of the original set of cards. Those can be written onto cards and included in the appropriate piles at any point during the tas#. After participants ma#e a first sort, you can as# them to brea# down the resulting piles into ever smaller ones. This successive sort is scored in the same way as a single sort. 7airs that remain together int he same pile after the second sort are given a value of 1, which is added to the value in the appropriate matri bo . !f they are still together after the thrid stage of sorting a 1 ia again added and so on until they are slpit into different piles or the sorting tas# ends.

!f the sorting continues until every pile contains $ust a single item, it given a complete ta onomy of the items which can be s#etced out on paper. As you construct this tree with local counterparts you can as# if the various subgrpoupings hane names. An improvised e ample of a complete successive sort and a resulting ta onomic structure is given in figure 4.&. this technique is particularly useful in studies of local classification of plants and animals.