Twenty years ago, Dr. Field, a noted anthropologist, visited the island of Tertia and concluded from his observations that children in Tertia were reared by an entire village rather than by their own biological parents. However, my recent interviews with

In this passage, Dr Karp's conclusion is that the interviw centered method is much better than observation centered method for understanding the child-rearing traditions there and in other island cultures. But this stand maintained by the author is based upon a serie sof assumptions, which if proved falacious, can challenge his conclusion.

The first assumption is that the economic and social, cultural conditions of Tertia have not changed since the last twenty years. The changes in the above factors could have resulted in the observation noted by the author. But this assumption might not be true and the author does not give any supporting evidence to back this assumption.

Now one of the most important aspects of an interview centered approach is to choose one's method correctly. For getting a useful data and conclusion, the normal distribution must be employed as that gives us the best estimate. Again we have to ensure that the population of the children interviewed must be representative of the whole population. Otherwise results will be skewed and we will get the wrong conclusion. We do not know these aspects, without which, the veracity of the conclusion remains in question.

One crucial point to be noted is that he is not doing this research alone, but it his his team of graduate students that are currently implementing the nterview-centered method. If one student takes some informations wrong or deliberately changes some facts, then this approach would will reflect some very different results from what is reality.

Thus in order for the author's argument to be valid, all of the above assumptions must be checked , and only then can he arrive at such a conclusion.