How and Why it’s Revolutionary
Frequency-Listing, or “Freq-listing” (based on freelisting) and the Notab Leadership and Key Informant Network Strategy (NOLKINS) is not a political strategy. Rather it is a strategy for engaged development. But in coming to understand how it works and why it can be so effective, it helps to think of it as an endeavor to identify leadership that is truly representative of the local population, leaders who can act as sources of information helping humanitarian aid organizations understand what is going on at ground-level, helping them reach out and inform the population, and as catalysts for implementing assistance activities. They subsequently can be partnered with to provide monitoring and feedback regarding the success and failures of interventions. In this sense, Freq-listing is to an election what a sample survey is to a census. Both freq-listing and elections yield leaders who are representative of the population. But freq-listing is arguably far more effective than an election because it is unencumbered by the candidate’s access to power, by the need for understanding how to negotiate the political process in order to qualify as a candidate, or even by the will to be a candidate. It is also unencumbered by opportunities or motivations to bribe, cajole or corrupt the process. Moreover, the way that freq-listing surveys are designed and conducted and the questions asked mean that the process selects for leaders who are truly local and rural, not merely urban leaders pretending to represent the rural poor. The end product is a network of recognized local leaders who are evenly distributed across the landscape, through which the population can be engaged for development interventions, and that can also be tapped for information and insights. Freq-listing is radically economical. The initial survey cost is a small fraction of what an election or census costs, it is logistically far simpler to carry out, and it yields a network of authorities who can subsequently be used as respondents in rapid telephone surveys. Quite literally freq-listing yields a living database that can be tapped at any time for 100ths of the cost of a common survey and that arguably provides data that is more valid than that of a common survey, the reason being that the respondents have been pre-selected specifically because their neighbors identified them for the qualities of honesty, wisdom and, leadership. Moreover, algorithms derived from Cultural Consensus Theory can subsequently be used to assess information from these leaders and detect with mathematical precision those who do not truly qualify, who are not being forthcoming and honest, or who at some point, decide to change and no longer be forthcoming and honest (read about an application of the model).
How It’s Done
Freq-Listing is a statistically robust survey method for identifying competent low-level community leaders (called notab) and/or informants. When dependable lists (for example, a tax role or census) or points of communal activity (such as a market) include all people in a target population, freq-listing can be accomplished by censusing or sampling people who are on a list or visiting the market. Where no list or appropriate venue is available, a household survey can accomplish the same task. Just as with most baseline surveys, a grid is used to systematically and randomly select GPS points distributed throughout the targeted activity area. These points are selected in Google Earth. The researcher then zooms in and moves the points to the nearest visible households. The GPS coordinates are then loaded into a GPS map app installed on tablet-telephones. The surveyors then use the tablets to locate the GPS points whereupon they interview male and female heads of the 5 households closest to each point. The surveyors each alternate between interviewing first a male head and then a female head (see Figure below).
The specific question we usually ask in our Haiti research is for of 5 most trustworthy male local leaders who live within 1-hour walking distance of the house. We then ask the respondent for 5 female leaders who live within 1-hour walking distance of the house. We specify trustworthiness and community involvement. The question can we phrased, ‘who would you turn to if you needed a trustworthy local leader’ or it may be phrased, ‘who is most respected and reliable in cases of adjudicating local disputes.’ In the case of Haiti the local concept of notab captures these traits, so long as the researchers specify that what is meant is notab, not in the sense of wealth, but rather honor and prestige. We also gather location names and contact telephone numbers for follow-up. We then compile the resulting lists to see which leaders are most frequently mentioned.
After the lists are cleaned, telephone surveyors subsequently lock in tele-communication with the notab using social network strategies that we have developed over the past seven years. The particular technique we use with NOKLINS is based on the simple fact that we have clusters of five respondents/households and therefore, if we cannot reach a respondent, we call one of the four neighbors and ask them to have the respondent call us. The technique has enabled us to contact notab by telephone with success rates of 90 – 95 percent, as compared to the typical 60 percent telephone contact rates we typically achieve without these techniques.
As mentioned above, the resulting notab database means that we not only have a network of community leaders that can be engaged to accomplish successful development interventions, it also means that an aid agency can subsequently perform surveys for a fraction of the time and cost of traditional surveys. Specifically, rather than follow-up surveys that depend on costly teams of surveyors who take weeks and even months to go to the ground and re-visit households, former respondents can be re-contacted from the office on a regular basis. The information gathered can be used to routinely populate Excel dashboard and automated reports to create an inexpensive and highly reliable monitoring and evaluation system.
Below is a diagram illustrating the Freq-Listing and the Notab Leadership and Key Informant Network (NOLKIN) process.
