As one moves from key informant strategies to methodologies that are typically used to obtain the perspectives of rank-and-file community members, consumers, social-problems subjects, and similar stakeholders, the salience of subjectivist models of social problems increases significantly. Community-based forums, focus groups, and surveys, as well as interviews of community members, are vehicles through which the claims of a wide range of “non-experts” can be voiced and gain a degree of legitimacy. Not surprisingly, these claims are often at odds with one another, and with those emerging from archival and key informant approaches. Data-gathering techniques that are interactive in nature, such as forums and focus groups, provide particularly potent illustrations of the fact that the domain covered by any given needs assessment can represent severely contested territory.