Botanical Ethnoknowledge Index: a new quantitative assessment method for cross-cultural analysis

The scientific accuracy of ethnobotanical study has significantly grown in the past decades due to the adoption of quantitative methods, mainly represented by indices. These quantitative approaches can provide data amenable to hypothesis testing, statistical validation, and comparative analysis. Plenty of indices are applied nowadays in ethnobotany. However, none of the previously developed indices have argued for comparing general ethnobotanical knowledge between two or more human groups. Hence, this study seeks to cover this methodological gap and proposes a novel index that will provide ethnobotanists with a tangible number representing the general ethnobotanical knowledge of a specific human group. The proposed index will enable researchers in the field to compare ethnobotanical knowledge of two or more ethnic/ religious/ cultural groups; it will also be possible to conduct a comparison within the same group, such as comparing two distanced time periods, genders, and/or age groups. The index complexly employs several factors that can be critical when assessing ethnobotanical knowledge (e.g. total number of species reported by all participants in a particular group, mean number of species reported per participant in a particular group, and mean number of citations per species in a particular group). The index is designed to be mainly used in ethnobotany; however, it is also usable in ethnobiology and may be applicable in other studies related to traditional knowledge assessment.