The Informant in Quantitative Research

The anthropological use of the informant is distinguished from the social survey in that the respondents are selected not for their representativeness but rather on the bases of informedness and ability to communicate with the social scientist. As such, the method seems to have general social science utility. In a study of the comparative morale often submarine crews, the rankings provided by three offship informants correlate .9 with rankings resulting from anonymous morale ballots filled out by all crew members and shows satisfactory agreement with other measures of morale.