HIERARCHY OF INFLUENCE:

    My somewhat bizarre analytic approach: 

Information learned about the interviewee can yield insight into more than just that individual.  We can take certain aspects of that individual's personality, tendencies and personality characteristics and speculate to see if this feature generalizes to other, increasingly more broad populations. 

PRIMARY INFORMATION

(learning about the individual, her life, family, occupation, values, etc.)

GENERALIZE TO FAMILY

take the factor in question and speculate/assess if it presents in others in her family. 

GENERALIZE TO IMMEDIATE COMMUNITY

(take the factor in question and speculate/assess if it presents in others in her community.

this is intended to include neighbors, fellow church/mosque/synagogue members

GENERALIZE TO EXTENDED COMMUNITIES

(people of similar cultural backgrounds, people from the same province, etc.)

GENERALIZE TO GENDER

GENERALIZE TO HUMAN RACE.

*******NOTE that the latter 2 are extremely far-fetched and very few personal characteristics can be generalized across those boundaries, but the "hierarchy" seemed incomplete without them*******

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