Culture - Traditionally used by social scientists to describe nearly everything that has been learned or produced by a group of people. A more limited definition restricts the concept to the knowledge people gather, share, and use to generate and interpret social behavior (Spradley and McCurdy 1972).

Emic understanding - Understanding based on the categories the local people use for dividing up their reality and identifying the terms they use for these categories (Pelto and Pelto 1978).

Etic understanding - Understanding based on the categories used by the researchers or outsiders to divide up reality.

Informed consent - Permission provided by the participants in a study for the researcher to use the information participants provide. Permission should be based upon an understanding of the activity and the uses that will be made of the results as well as indicate that participation is voluntary and that the individual knows that he or she can withdraw at any time.

Insiders -Team members or participants in social science research who are identified by the social group being studied as members in good standing. Traditional social science research has focused on efforts by investigators who have traditionally been outsiders trying to understand what the insiders believe, value, practice, and expect. There is a growing realization that insiders should play a role in the design, implementation, and publication of research (Van Maanen et al. 1969).

Iterative process - A process in which replications of a cycle produce results that approximate the desired result more and more closely. For RAP, the process describes the cycle of data analysis and data collection designed to produce better and better results. This same approach is labeled by some social scientists as a recursive process.

Participants - Persons interviewed as part of the RAP process. "Participants" can be used interchangeably with "informants" or "respondents" when these terms are not modified with the words "individual" or "key." The term "subjects" is generally avoided.

Participant observation - A qualitative inquiry technique that requires more than simply being there and passively watching. This technique requires intensive observing, listening, and speaking to systematically explore relationships among different events while recording what is seen and heard (Ely et al. 1991).

Qualitative research/qualitative inquiry - Attempts to understand experience as the participants feel it and to interpret phenomena in terms of the meaning people bring to them. Studies are conducted in their natural settings (Denzin and Lincoln 1994). The researcher is an instrument of data collection and is required to suspend preconceptions about the topics under investigation (Miles and Huberman 1994). Qualitative research is based on a few cases and many variables, whereas quantitative research works with a few variables and many cases (Ragin 1987, as cited in Creswell 1998).

Questionnaire research/survey research - Research based on questionnaires, a group of written questions to which individuals respond. Questionnaires are often administered to a sample of subjects drawn from a population (a survey) where the objective is to be able to make inferences about the population. Even though questionnaire research and survey research are distinct methodologies, the terms are used interchangeably in this book to identify research in which specific questions are prepared in advance based on the assumption that local categories and words are known and that enough is known of the local situation to identify important issues.

Rapid Assessment Process (RAP) - Intensive, team-based qualitative inquiry using triangulation, iterative data analysis, and additional data collection to quickly develop a preliminary understanding of a situation from the insider's perspective.

Rapid research methods - Approaches to research designed to address the need for cost-effective and timely results in rapidly changing situations. These methods share some of the characteristics of qualitative or ethnographic research. The objective for most of these approaches can be summarized as first-cut assessments of poorly known areas (Conservation International 1991, 1). An element of compromise is recognized when rapid research methods are described as being "fairly quick and fairly clean." (Chambers 1991, 521).

Rapid Appraisal, Rapid Assessment, Rapid Rural Appraisal - Despite differences in details, there is general consensus that these terms describe research based on small multidisciplinary teams using semistructured interviews and direct observations to collect information, and that the entire process can be completed in one to six weeks.

Reliability - The consistency of a measure from one use to the next. When repeated measurements of the same thing give similar results, the measurement is said to be reliable.

Triangulation - A term from navigation and physical surveying that describes an operation for determining a position by using of bearings from two known fixed points so that the three points form a triangle. Triangulation is used as a metaphor by social scientists for the use of data from different sources, the use of several different researchers, the use of multiple perspectives to interpret a single set of data, and the use of multiple methods to study a single problem.

Validity - A term to describe an instrument measuring what it is supposed to measure. Even when measurements are reliable, consistent from one use to the next, they can be invalid. Some qualitative researchers propose the use of the term "trustworthiness" instead of "validity" and "reliability" (Ely et al. 1991).

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