Key Informant

Key informants, or key actors, are individuals who are articulate and knowledgeable about their community. They are often cultural brokers straddling two cultures. This role gives them a special vantage point in describing their culture. Key actors play a pivotal role in the theater of qualitative research, providing an understanding of cultural norms and responsibilities. Key informants represent an efficient source of invaluable cultural information. It is impossible to interview everyone and observe everything in a community and, logistically, it is easier to work with one or two reliable key informants than it is to assemble a series of focus groups.

Key informants help to establish a link between the researcher and the community. They may provide detailed historical data, photographs, manuscripts, knowledge about interpersonal relationships, a contextual framework in which to observe and interpret behavior, and a wealth of information about the nuances of everyday life. Key informants typically provide information through interviews and informal conversation. In research on communities and large organizational studies where there is a paucity of relevant archival documentation, particularly concerning vested interests and power dynamics, key informants are especially valuable.

Key informants generally answer questions about the group in a comprehensive, albeit meandering, fashion. Key informants provide not only personal feelings or opinions, but reflect on larger social patterns as well. They are considered “teachers” by some ethno graphic researchers because they impart information, insight, and understanding. However, their insights are rarely accepted blindly. Their views are compared and combined with interviews, observations, and survey data in order to make a complete study. More to the point, key informant and qualitative researchers are collaborators, using questions, answers, and probes to better understand how and why things work.

The competency of key informants is often measured by length of time they have been in the community, knowledge of community and neighboring communities or organizations, knowledge about a specific topic, and type and degree of interaction with community members. Key informants are often assessed in terms of inter-coder reliability, or the degree to which they interpret the same event in the same manner. In some cases, they are measured by the ability to offer completely different perspectives about the same situation, based on their different roles in the community. There are several drawbacks to using key informants, including bias (particularly as a result of selection, role, and/or proximity to phenomena under study), memory failure, distortion, and guilt by association. Qualitative researchers and evaluators traditionally rely most heavily on a few key informants throughout a study or research project to triangulate findings and enhance rigor.