Licenciatura em Educação do Campo, Universidade Federal do Piauí- Campus Senador Helvídio Nunes de Barros, Piauí, PI, 6460-7670, Brazil.
Departamento de Botânica, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Recife, PE, 50670-901, Brazil.
J Ethnobiol Ethnomed. 2021 Jan 23;17(1):4. doi: 10.1186/s13002-021-00432-5.
The free list, also written "freelist", or "free recall", is an ethnographic method that characterizes the local knowledge of a population about a given cultural domain. However, there is still much to elucidate about the variables that can influence the number of items that participants cite using this technique. This study applied a casual-comparative experimental design to analyze whether 3 months' time, age, and external stimuli influence the similarity of plant free lists applied at different times.
Data was collected from 103 farmers from the rural community Alto dos Canutos, in the municipality of Picos, Piauí state, Brazil. Two free lists were conducted at two different times, with an interval of three months between them. Subsequently, the similarity between the first and second free lists of each participant was calculated using the Jaccard Similarity Index. The generalized linear model (GLM) with binomial errors and stepwise approach was used to analyze the effects of age and external stimuli on information collection when comparing free lists applied at different times.
Participants' age influenced the information that the free lists collected, demonstrating that the older the participants, the lower the similarity among the free lists. Among the external stimuli analyzed, only the presence of third parties influenced the content of the free lists at the time of the interview. However, contrary to expectations, third-party presence positively influenced the similarity of the lists.
The results show that the studied variables age and third-party presence can influence the capture of knowledge. These findings warrant future research into the influences' causes and their potential mitigation, e.g., by isolation or by breaking the medicinal plant domain into focused sub-domains and conducting simpler, successive free-lists, which can mitigate memory issues.
自由列表，也称为“自由回忆”或“自由联想”，是一种民族志方法，用于描述特定文化领域内人群的本地知识。然而，对于影响参与者使用该技术引用项目数量的变量，仍有许多需要阐明。本研究采用了随机比较实验设计，以分析 3 个月的时间、年龄和外部刺激是否会影响不同时间应用的植物自由列表的相似性。
数据来自巴西皮奥伊州皮科市阿尔托多斯坎托斯农村社区的 103 名农民。在两次不同的时间进行了两次自由列表，两次之间间隔三个月。然后，使用 Jaccard 相似性指数计算每位参与者的第一次和第二次自由列表之间的相似性。使用具有二项错误和逐步方法的广义线性模型（GLM）分析年龄和外部刺激对不同时间应用的自由列表进行信息收集时的影响。
参与者的年龄影响了自由列表收集的信息，表明参与者年龄越大，自由列表之间的相似性越低。在所分析的外部刺激中，只有第三方的存在会在访谈时影响自由列表的内容。然而，与预期相反，第三方的存在会积极影响列表的相似性。
结果表明，所研究的变量年龄和第三方存在可以影响知识的获取。这些发现需要进一步研究这些影响的原因及其潜在缓解措施，例如通过隔离或将药用植物领域划分为聚焦的子领域，并进行更简单、连续的自由列表，这可以减轻记忆问题的影响。
