WRITING: Freelisting (beginning) and Constrained Listing (advanced)

Freelisting

- Freelisting is a basic research technique used to elicit shared knowledge about the elements or members of a "cultural domain" [a category of thought]. It is a powerful technique for exploring how people think about and categorize the world around them.
- Freelisting is a qualitative technique used in anthropology, sociology, marketing, and other social science fields to gather data about how a group of people categorize or perceive a particular topic, concept, product, or cognitive domain.
- Freelisting is a basic field technique used as one of the very first steps in field research. It is a very useful, easy, flexible, and quick way to get things started. And followup research can easily be done to find out about the reasoning behind the list of items.
  - In freelisting people are simply asked to name as many ______ as they can think of.
  - Freelisting is the basis for later more sophisticated analysis, and it is always an excellent starting point.
  - Examples of "cultural domains" would be "animals", "birds", "pets", "fish", "insects". . . . or "rituals", "customs", "jobs", "relatives", "sports", "hobbies", "meals", "snacks", "drinks". . . .
- For domains that have a name or are easily described, the technique is very simple: just ask a set of respondents to list all the items, words, or ideas that come to mind when they think about a specific subject.
- The goal is to understand the shared cultural knowledge, mental models, cognitive or associations that people of a group or community have about a topic.
  - Example: "List all of the varsity sports that are played in high school in this community."
  - Example: "List all of the snacks that people eat during a Super Bowl party".
  - Example: "What types of music do people listen to in this town?"
  - Example: In the Anthropology of Food class Pre-Assessment task, for example, people are asked to "list all of the non-poisonous foods you would not eat".
    - In this case the "cultural domain" is "non-poisonous foods you would not eat"
- It is called a "freelisting" because the question allows one to name as many or as few foods as they want.
  - There is usually no time limit, and participants are encouraged to list everything that comes to mind.
  - The goal in these kinds of studies is to compile a list of all of the items mention in the community or group.
  - With the results of Freelisting, the basic statistics that are valid are "descriptive statistics" like percentages of the items on the lists, and frequencies.
    - And with a group one can, for example, do a simple Salience Analysis, that is determine which items are listed earliest, or most often (and hence are more "salient" or important).
- For more information see:
  - Freelists Links to an external site. -- Steve Borgatti Links to an external site.

- For an excellent work on the application of freelisting and processing freelisting data (and what kinds of things that leads to) see Systematic Data Collection Links to an external site.. 1988. Weller, Susan C., and A. Kimball Romney (Newberry Park, CA).

A good example of how that works at a more advance level is Siposné Nándori, Eszter, and Timothy G. Roufs. "The Effect of Economic Conditions on Poverty Perception in Minnesota." SN Social Sciences, 3, 189 (24 October 2023), 16 pp. DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s43545-023-00773-w Links to an external site.. https://rdcu.be/dtmEl Links to an external site..

The paper analyzes subjective poverty in St. Louis County, Minnesota, with the methods of systematic data collection in 2020 and makes a diachronic comparison using the results of a similar survey from 2010. The paper identifies the most important poverty-related items and compares the precise meanings of the results of the 2010 and 2020 surveys. It also aims to find out how the recovery after the recession of 2008 modified perceptions of poverty. It is revealed that poverty in 2020 is mainly associated with items related to material needs. Many of the items mentioned in relation to poverty are related to financial issues, to basic human needs, or to physical safety. The paper concludes that in spite of the economic recovery, subjective poverty did not change significantly in the examined period. Authors may be contacted at eszter.sne.nandori@uni-miskolc.hu and troufs@d.umn.edu for further information.

Constrained Listing

In addition to Freelisting, where the respondent is basically asked to list all of the _______ that they can think of, you can "constrain" the number of items simply by asking something like, "Name the ten most important ______ in this community".
- Example: "Name the six most important people in town".
- Example: "Name the three favorite snacks at the Super Bowl party you attended".
- Example: "Name the three most important varsity sports in the high school".
- Example: "Name the three most important reasons people consider themselves poor in Duluth."
One of the advantages of Constrained Listing is that one can validly use more sophisticated statistical measures to analyze and evaluate the data.
- Example: It makes statistically valid comparisons possible. One could, for example compare why people think they are poor in Village A in the mining area of The Range in Northern Minnesota, with why the people in Village A in a comparable mining are of Hungary think they are poor.
- It would be one way, for e.g. to apply valid statistical reasoning (and mathematics) to answer the question "What makes the people of Finland the happiest people in the world?" (Cf. Week 4 Discussion.)
The method of Constrained Listing is a field/analytical technique that would be taught in an advanced social science course.