Abstract
Quantitative techniques for the analysis of collected data have become increasingly popular among ethnobiologists and ethnobotanists in particular. Since the 1990s, a number of techniques have been proposed, and many authors have adopted them in their research. However, this acceptance of quantitative techniques was not accompanied by an analysis of their limitations and weaknesses. This chapter presents a discussion of the role of quantitative techniques for the analysis of plant data and an overview showing some of the most commonly used techniques. These include examples cited in some reviews, along with more recently proposed additions and limitations for some of these examples. The techniques discussed here were extracted from ethnobotanical works but are nevertheless applicable in other fields of ethnobiology.
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da Silva, V.A., do Nascimento, V.T., Soldati, G.T., Medeiros, M.F.T., Albuquerque, U.P. (2014). Techniques for Analysis of Quantitative Ethnobiological Data: Use of Indices. In: Albuquerque, U., Cruz da Cunha, L., de Lucena, R., Alves, R. (eds) Methods and Techniques in Ethnobiology and Ethnoecology. Springer Protocols Handbooks. Humana Press, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8636-7_24
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8636-7_24
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