Qualitative research methods generally depend heav ily on good communication between researcher and informant. When qualitative methodologists study in formants with severe retardation whose use of language may be limited, what do they do?If the researchers plan to study the world of the informant, then traditional participant observation guidelines are useful. But when the researcher wants to interview the informant, some modifications need to be made. The authors suggest several guidelines to follow.

Ethnographers of youth often invoke adolescent memories in relation to their informants. This article examines memory as a concern for ethnographers who study young people. It suggests that this rhetorical strategy heightens the narrator’s authority and authenticates the author’s speaking position, pulling the center of the story from the youthful informants toward the adult researcher. At the same time, this strategy ignores power relations between adults and youth. The article explores multiple representations of memory, the social construction of youth, and these effects in an example of research. The article argues that memory is not a form of bias but a problematic that must be addressed to provide adequate attention to the youthful informant’s legitimacy and authority as an interpreter of experience.

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In sum, readers will find Werner's book to be a great source of infor mation related to the hardships involved on overland journeys to the West Coast. They will also find a pervasive case made for the near limitless strength of the human spirit. Those concerned with why children were forced to endure these hardships and thereafter exert this kind of strength had better look elsewhere. In terms of a general account of the overland jour neys, the book does little to challenge the work of historians such as John Unruh or John Mack Faragher.

If one undertakes naturalistic evaluation without formal training, there are some important considerations and sources of information to keep in mind.