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Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine
Published in: Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 1/2012

Open Access 01-12-2012 | Research

A new technique for testing distribution of knowledge and to estimate sampling sufficiency in ethnobiology studies

Authors: Thiago Antonio Sousa Araújo, Alyson Luiz Santos Almeida, Joabe Gomes Melo, Maria Franco Trindade Medeiros, Marcelo Alves Ramos, Rafael Ricardo Vasconcelos Silva, Cecília Fátima Castelo Branco Rangel Almeida, Ulysses Paulino Albuquerque

Published in: Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine | Issue 1/2012

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Abstract

Background

We propose a new quantitative measure that enables the researcher to make decisions and test hypotheses about the distribution of knowledge in a community and estimate the richness and sharing of information among informants. In our study, this measure has two levels of analysis: intracultural and intrafamily.

Methods

Using data collected in northeastern Brazil, we evaluated how these new estimators of richness and sharing behave for different categories of use.

Results

We observed trends in the distribution of the characteristics of informants. We were also able to evaluate how outliers interfere with these analyses and how other analyses may be conducted using these indices, such as determining the distance between the knowledge of a community and that of experts, as well as exhibiting the importance of these individuals' communal information of biological resources. One of the primary applications of these indices is to supply the researcher with an objective tool to evaluate the scope and behavior of the collected data.
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Metadata
Title
A new technique for testing distribution of knowledge and to estimate sampling sufficiency in ethnobiology studies
Authors
Thiago Antonio Sousa Araújo
Alyson Luiz Santos Almeida
Joabe Gomes Melo
Maria Franco Trindade Medeiros
Marcelo Alves Ramos
Rafael Ricardo Vasconcelos Silva
Cecília Fátima Castelo Branco Rangel Almeida
Ulysses Paulino Albuquerque
Publication date
01-12-2012
Publisher
BioMed Central
Published in
Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine / Issue 1/2012
Electronic ISSN: 1746-4269
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/1746-4269-8-11

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