Source
doi:10.1177/1609406920948775 — original publication (opens in a new tab; the file is not redistributed)
Summary
Michelle Lokot’s Whose Voices? Whose Knowledge? A Feminist Analysis of the Value of Key Informant Interviews (2021, International Journal of Qualitative Methods) is a peer-reviewed commentary that interrogates why key-informant interviews (KIIs) are so often treated as a superior source of knowledge, especially in policy-related research. Drawing on a review of feminist and qualitative-methods scholarship, it argues that KIIs sit near the top of an implicit “hierarchy of research methods” because informants are cast as expert, high-status “owners” of contextual knowledge, and that this status can lead researchers to over-value KII data, presume the informant speaks for their community, and privilege the (often male) perspectives of power-holders over the voices of “ordinary” community members. The paper is explicitly not a rejection of KIIs: it affirms that they are a legitimate and relatively easy-to-implement method for capturing the perspectives of decision-makers and power-holders, and that within their original long-term ethnographic use they yield deep, trust-grounded knowledge. Its constructive contribution, and its relevance to the Neobiome thesis, is a reflexive frame for choosing and using interview methods, closing with five critical-reflection questions and an argument for balancing KIIs with in-depth interviews of “ordinary” community members and other methods.
Key thesis insights
-
KIIs are a defensible method for eliciting expert and power-holder knowledge, which is what the thesis uses them for, but the paper cautions against treating that knowledge as automatically representative. Lokot states plainly that “KIIs are a valuable method for capturing the perspectives of power-holders and decision-makers”, that they “enable insider insights into complex issues, facilitate access into communities, and also represent a research method that is relatively easy to implement” (Conclusion / “Whither the Key Informant Interview?”, p. 6). The critique is directed not at using KIIs but at the assumption that an informant’s “expert” status means they “understand and represent their communities” (Abstract). For the thesis Methodology chapter, this legitimises expert interviews as the vehicle for specialist technology and governance knowledge while flagging that expert testimony must not be read as community-representative evidence. LIT_104
-
The core risk is an implicit “hierarchy of research methods” that over-values KIIs and produces “frequent and heavy reliance” on them. Lokot argues that “methodological differences between KIIs and other research methods reinforce a hierarchy that often places more value on KIIs”, quoting McKenna et al. (2011) that this results in “frequent and heavy reliance” on the method, “a particular problem in policy-related research” driven by time and resource constraints (“Research Method Hierarchies”, pp. 4-5). This is the direct methodological warrant for triangulating expert interviews in the thesis with other evidence rather than resting conclusions on a small set of privileged voices. LIT_104
-
Balance KIIs with “ordinary” community voices and other methods, a warrant for the project’s expert-interview-plus-community-survey design. The paper advocates that “the benefits of KIIs are best realized when this research method is used in combination with other research methods which enable ‘ordinary’ perspectives to emerge”, proposing in-depth interviews with ordinary community members “alongside FGDs that allow women to separately participate, and/or surveys of community members” (pp. 5-6). It also flags a gendered failure mode: “unless intentional effort is made to equally interview women, it is possible that research results in disproportionately higher male ‘key informants’”, reproducing “dominant narratives” (p. 5). This corroborates the thesis’s mixed design, where expert interviews are read against a community survey rather than standing alone. LIT_104
-
A five-question reflexive checklist for interview-method selection, usable as an explicit reflexivity frame in the Methodology chapter. Lokot offers “five basic questions in considering the choice and use of research methods”: (1) whose knowledge is voiced through this method; (2) whose knowledge is not voiced; (3) how power hierarchies between researcher and participant are maintained or challenged; (4) how participatory or flexible the method is; and (5) how it enables intersectional analysis (p. 6). The paper also documents that the KII has drifted from a long-term, trust-built ethnographic relationship to a short-term “reconnaissance technique”, which affects the “reliability and precision” of one-off interviews (p. 3), a caution the thesis can cite when justifying interview depth and reflexivity. LIT_104
Research targets
None opened and none resolved. This is a methodology citation for the project’s account of its key-informant / expert interviews; it does not fill a specific named backlog gap.
Notes
- Provenance. Gold open access, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0), published by SAGE in the International Journal of Qualitative Methods. Identity verified against the PDF itself (title page + running footers + DOI on the cover).
- Genre. This is a peer-reviewed Commentary, a conceptual/argumentative piece grounded in a literature review, not an empirical study. It is cited in the thesis for its methodological argument, not for any datum.
data_quality: highreflects a peer-reviewed, well-cited methods source; it is notverified(which the project reserves for figures corroborated by an independent source, not applicable to a conceptual argument). - Scope. Thesis-only. No NZ-specific content, no NI calculation inputs,
feeds: []. Relevant to the project’s interview methodology as the critical-reflection / limits-of-KII counterweight, sitting alongside the project’s expert interviews (I01-I04) and community survey (SUR_001). - Ethics-boundary check. The paper’s examples (feminist critique, gendered voice, humanitarian/development contexts) are cited only for their methodological argument. No claim is drawn that implies the Neobiome project delivers a feminist, papakāinga, or Māori research programme; the citation is a methods caution about interview design, nothing more.
Connections
Referenced by
Concepts (1): Research Methodology