The need to assess and compare Knowledge Acquisition (KA) techniques has always been considered for more productivity in KA sessions and developing expert systems. This paper aims at investigating real case studies to identify circumstances wherein KA techniques have achieved better results. In this paper, a qualitative research method has been used for data collection in the field of KA. Therefore “grounded theory” research approach has been selected for collecting data from real case studies. A conceptual model is developed by analyzing the collected data from the case studies. In this conceptual model, case studies are classified into three groups: critical issues, pure science and services. The results show that in most of the studies, contrived techniques are found to be better than natural techniques, although the use of natural techniques such as interviews is more common. This study is probably the first one to provide an integration of case studies that can be a road map for interested people to KA, especially on comparing the techniques.

Within knowledge management process, Knowledge Acquisition (KA) and its related techniques are very important and can help knowledge engineers and domain experts build and maintain a system’s knowledge base.

Despite an increased interest in knowledge elicitation, KA has often been cited as the main bottleneck in developing expert systems (Gammack and Young, 1985; Hoffman, 1987; Kidd, 1987; Wielinga et al., 1988; and Holsapple et al., 2008), because different factors influence KA process; for example, domain experts, knowledge engineers, knowledge representation schemes, KA techniques and problem domains (Adelman, 1989). Recent studies on KA have shown that KA techniques are more efficient than other factors (Wagner et al., 2001).

Knowledge Management Journal, Knowledge Acquisition (KA), Laddering techniques, Concept sorting, Repertory grid, Grounded Theory (GT), Techniques, Comparative Study.