Peer Evaluation Can Reliably Measure Local Knowledge

Publikation: Beiträge in ZeitschriftenÜbersichtsarbeitenForschung

Authors

  • Victoria Reyes-García
  • Isabel Díaz Reviriego
  • Romain Duda
  • Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares
  • Sandrine Gallois
  • Maximilien Guèze
  • Lucentezza Napitupulu
  • Aili Pyhälä

We assess the consistency of measures of individual local ecological knowledge obtained through peer evaluation against three standard measures: identification tasks, structured questionnaires, and self-reported skills questionnaires. We collected ethnographic information among the Baka (Congo), the Punan (Borneo), and the Tsimane’ (Amazon) to design site-specific but comparable tasks to measure medicinal plant and hunting knowledge. Scores derived from peer ratings correlate with scores of identification tasks and self-reported skills questionnaires. The higher the number of people rating a subject, the larger the association. Associations were larger for the full sample than for subsamples with high and low rating scores. Peer evaluation can provide a more affordable method in terms of difficulty, time, and budget to study intracultural variation of knowledge, provided that researchers (1) do not aim to describe local knowledge; (2) select culturally recognized domains of knowledge; and (3) use a large and diverse (age, sex, and kinship) group of evaluators.

OriginalspracheEnglisch
ZeitschriftField Methods
Jahrgang28
Ausgabenummer4
Seiten (von - bis)345-362
Anzahl der Seiten18
ISSN1525-822X
DOIs
PublikationsstatusErschienen - 01.11.2016
Extern publiziertJa

DOI