Using free-listing technique to develop measures of group consensus: the case of language choice in Ukraine

Abstract

Free-listing is a useful qualitative technique suitable for exploring how groups of individuals think about a cultural domain and define its focal features. This tool is also well-adapted for identifying shared collective priorities which makes free-listing a helpful tool for ethnographers and students of culture who are often lacking this important information at the beginning of the project or have no fast way of acquiring it by other ethnographic means. One of its advantages includes its ability to elicit emic categories in the data at the early stages of fieldwork, thus securing the data quality in addition to its richness. The present study (N = 1253) conducted in January 2021 is part of a larger project merging cultural characteristics and electoral behavior. The data fragment presented in the paper showcases the utility of a free-listing technique for studying consensual beliefs relevant to language-based cultural identity in a sample of Ukrainian- and Russian-speaking Ukrainians. The study this data was collected for explores whether the territorial cleavage in electoral behavior and language divide as a part of it (Russian vs. Ukrainian) in Ukraine signal consistent differences in underlying shared collective beliefs about success and prestige. The preliminary analysis of free-listed items and emerging categories suggests that there are no substantial differences between the language-based groups regarding the beliefs about success and prestige that lie outside the territorial cleavage whereas substantial differences were identified within cleavage-related categories.