Selecting Ethnographic Informants (Qualitative Research Methods) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0803935862 ISBN 13: 9780803935860

Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc, 1990

Synopsis

Your study is only as valid as the data you collect, and in ethnography, this means the informants you use. Rather than relying on chance to provide a qualified person to be an informant, Johnson shows you how to systematically select people as informants. Using two frameworks--theory driven and data driven--we learn not only what makes good informants, but how to choose them. Selecting Ethnographic Informants provides a balanced strategy for informant recruitment and will be most useful for anyone in sociology, anthropology, communication research, organization analysis, and education and health research. "Much of the book is devoted to describing the techniques and advantages of network-based informant selection. The procedures discussed are highly systematic and will be particularly useful for researchers studying populations that are divided into discrete subgroups with relatively high degrees of internal routine or organization. . . . Johnson has advanced the discourse on ethnographic sampling." --Contemporary Sociology

About this title

About the Author

Jeffrey Johnson is a University Term Professor of Anthropology at the University of Florida. He was a former Program Manager with the Army Research Office (IPA) where he started the basic science research program in the social sciences.  He has conducted extensive long-term research, supported by the National Science Foundation, comparing group dynamics and the evolution of social networks of over-wintering crews at the American South Pole Station, with those at the Polish, Russian, Chinese, and Indian Antarctic Stations. In related research, he has studied aspects of team cognition and social networks on success in simulated space missions. He has published extensively in anthropological, sociological, biological, aerospace, and marine science journals and was the founding editor of the Journal of Quantitative Anthropology, co-editor of the journal Human Organization, and  the author of Selecting Ethnographic Informants, Sage, 1990.

Edition details

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Publication date: 1990
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0803935862
• ISBN 13: 9780803935860
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 96
• Editor: Johnson Jeffrey C.