Sampling problems in Brazilian ethnobotanical studies: an overview

MUÑIZ, PATRICIA; ALBUQUERQUE, ULYSSES; LADIO A H

Montpellier

Congreso; 13th Congress of the International Society of Ethnobiology; 2012

International Society of Ethnobiology

Brazil has a strong tradition in ethnobotanical research, as it joins a high biodiversity with an expressive cultural diversity. However, little attention has been given to sampling matters for data collection and scientific divulgation. This work compiled ethnobotanical articles published in national and international journals in order to analyze the most common sampling problems and if research characteristics can influence on the presence of sampling irregularities. We focused on studies about medicinal plants that exhibit a species-indications list. G-test was used to compare the proportion of works with and without sampling problems considering community status (urban x rural), journal status (national x international) type of sample (based on key informants or general surveys) and presence of ethnobotanical indexes (present x absent). We found that an alarming proportion of ethnobotanical works has some kind of sampling problems (68.2% serious and 19.8% moderate). The most common are: (1) lack of information about sample size or universe for samples based on the number of people; (2) lack of information about the specific group or about the sample in studies based on a group of interest, and (3) when the margin of error for the sample to be representative of the community is more than 10%. Researches in rural areas present significantly more research problems than urban areas (G=12.1; p