Toward Quality Control in Key Informant Data

This paper deals with the question of predicting quality in key informant data. The concept of precision (closeness of key informants' responses to the actual nature of the quantitative and qualitative domains on which they are reporting) is introduced and measured in a research setting where key informant reliability (agreement) has been assessed by other field workers. It is shown that it is possible to control the quality of key informant data because informants appear to be reliable and precise in similar domains and unreliable and imprecise in other domains of reporting.