PROGRAMME PLANNING, IMPLEMENTATION AND EVALUATION2(1+1)
Lesson 31 :Techniques of Participatory Rural Appraisal
Key informant interview
Key informants are the people who are considered experts in a given situation because of their professional knowledge or their position of influence in the community or organization. Examples of key informants include teachers, religious leaders, grass root workers and traditional and political leaders.
Interviewing several of these categories of informants shall yield fairly accurate information about the problems and needs of the community at large. Basic information about the village is known to almost everybody within the village but certain key informants have a deeper and more reliable and detailed knowledge about some aspect eg.
Shepherds know much about animal structure within the village and development of animal herds over time.
Old women engaged in agriculture may be specialists regarding seed selection
Old men know much about history of the village
Identification of key Informants
To identify the key informants for interviewing, villagers are asked about persons who can give detailed information about a certain topic. In addition, literature reviews give indications about social organization of the culture and relevant specialists among them. The accuracy of information obtained from key informant interviews depends mainly on developing a suitable interview guide, training of the interviews and selection of informants. The information received from the key informants has to be cross checked through group discussions and interviews with other people.
Participants