Seeing the community's perspective through multiple emic and etic vistas

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Environmental Health
• Social Science Research Methods

Background:

• Health Impact Assessment (HIA) integrates community input to understand local health issues.
• Community data includes 'emic' (lived experiences) and 'etic' (expert) perspectives.
• There's a growing trend of HIA researchers incorporating external expert (etic) data.

Purpose of the Study:

• To analyze who HIA researchers involve when seeking community input.
• To investigate how different organizations (government, NGO, university) utilize emic and etic data.
• To understand the implications of sampling strategies on defining the 'community's perspective'.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of a database of published HIAs (1999-2011) in English.
• Focus on single-authored assessments by governments, NGOs, or universities.
• Categorization of community input as emic (insider) or etic (outsider) data.

Main Results:

• HIA researchers utilize diverse emic and etic community perspectives.
• University HIA researchers engage more emic perspectives than government or NGO researchers.
• NGO researchers tend to focus on either emic or etic data, with less integration.

Conclusions:

• University and government HIA researchers are more likely to integrate multiple emic and etic perspectives.
• NGO HIA researchers often use a singular approach (emic or etic).
• HIA researchers can strategically combine insider and outsider input to frame the 'community's perspective'.