Informant Interview

Locating an Informant

While most people can become informants because of their knowledge about a particular aspect of everyday life (e.g., a boy who can skillfully maneuver a skateboard), not everyone makes a good informant. A good informant is culturally sensitive, articulate, and can effectively link the field researcher and the community. The informant can be a formal or informal leader, part of the mainstream with access to up-to-date cultural information, or a member of two cultures and thus able to speak in nuanced ways about both. In general, an informant should have at least a year of full-time involvement in a cultural scene in order to speak with knowledge and competence about it. Therefore, a good question to ask at the beginning is: “How long have you been involved in this activity?” People who used to be members of a particular cultural scene but are no longer involved in it do not make good informants.

Questioning an Informant

Usually, informant interviews take place over several hours, dispersed over several days, with analysis of the collected data in between. It is important that both researcher and informant allocate adequate time to the interviews. Often, the informant is interested in the research and is willing to make time. If the initial informant does not have time to participate, the researcher can ask him or her to recommend someone else with the same level of knowledge. In addition to availability and time, a key aspect of the relationship between field researchers and informants is establishing and maintaining trust. The interaction between the informant and the ethnographer can be influenced by cultural barriers, individual personalities, or aspects of the informant’s background that are unknown to the ethnographer.

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