Download participatory rural appraisal (PRA)

PARTICIPATORY RURAL APPRAISAL
Overview of presentation
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Introduction and Definition of PRA
Origin of PRA
Principles shared by PRA and RRA
Exclusive principles of PRA
What it is?
Definition
Principle Components
Precepts of PRA
Evolution in Details
What’s in it?
Where it is Applied?
Practical Example
Criticism
Bibliography
PRA: Introduction and Definition
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PRA : Participatory Rural Appraisal
Components:
 People
 Knowledge
 Participation
 Planning
 Action
It is a combination of different approaches to
 Share
 Enhance
 Analyze
 Plan
 Act
For the betterment of the rural people with their participation
The secrets behind the success of PRA are
 Decentralization
 Empowerment
PRA: Origin
 PRA has been evolved from RRA (Rapid Rural Appraisal)
 In mid 80’s the necessity of participation in rural development
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became evident and the term PRA was born
The understanding of PRA came mostly from field rather than
academia
PRA mostly focuses on the empowerment of people through
participation
The sustainability rate of PRA is high due to the participation of the
local people
The sense of ownership and belongingness helps to the success of
PRA
Principles shared by PRA & RRA
 Reversal of learning
 To learn of the local people
 Learning rapidly and progressively
 Exploration, flexible methods, adaptable
 Offsetting bias
 To be receptive rather than preconceived ideas
 Optimizing tradeoffs
 Understanding the usefulness of information
 Triangulating
 Crosschecking and approximation
Exclusive Principles of PRA
 Empowerment
 The authority to local people through decentralization and
confidence building
 Self critical awareness
 Mistakes are lessons to learn and to do better next time
 Personal responsibility
 The belongingness and ownership to the participants
 Sharing
 To discuss and argue about ideas in open forum with all
stakeholders
What it is?
 Participatory research is not an alternative research
method, but an approach that can be applied to any
methodology – survey, experimental, qualitative (Lilja
and Bellon 2008).
 “PRA methods, as they are often called, are visual and
tangible and usually performed by small groups of
people”. (Chambers 2007)
 PRA comprised of different research tools to facilitate
local people in
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Analyzing information
Practicing critical self-awareness
Taking responsibility
Sharing their knowledge of life and conditions to plan and to
act.
Definition
 As it has diverse application and has been changing
rapidly any effort to define it might be folly and
‘unhelpful’.
 “ An approach and methods for learning about rural
life and conditions from, with and by rural people”.
(Chambers 1994)
Principle Components of PRA
Source: Chambers 2007.
Adopted from Chambers 2007
Evolution
 Originally evolved from Rapid Rural Appraisal and
spread fast in the 1990s.
 Shift in rhetoric: “from top-down to bottom up, from
centralized to local diversity, from blue prints to
learning process”. (Chambers 1994)
 Learning is two way system and respondents know
better his/her daily encounter.
 Emphasis on the power relation between the
researcher and ‘researched’.
 Practicing participatory research started since 1983 in
Bangladesh.
Evolution
 Five streams which stand out as sources and
parallels to PRA are, in alphabetical order:
 Activist participatory research;
 Agro-ecosystem analysis;
 Applied anthropology;
 Field research on farming systems;
 Rapid rural appraisal. (Chambers 1994)
Activist Participatory Research
 The contributions of APR to PRA are more through
concepts than methods:
 Common ideas:
 Poor people are creative and capable;
 Can and should do their own investigation, analysis and
planning;
 Outsiders have roles as a convenors, catalysts and
facilitators.
 The weak and marginalized can and should be improved.
Agro-ecosystem Analysis
 Gordon Conway developed this approach in Thailand at
the University of Chiang Mai around the year 1978.
 It contributed much in current RRA and PRA through:
 Transects (Systematic walks and observation);
 Informal mapping (Sketch maps drawn on site);
 Diagramming (Seasonal Calendars, flow and causal diagrams,
bar charts, van or chapati diagrams )
 Innovation assessment (scoring and ranking different actions)
Applied Anthropology
 “PRA represents an extension and application of social
anthropological approaches, insights, and methods,
cross-fertilized with others.”
 Insights and contributions from Applied Anthropology:
 Field learning is flexible art rather than rigid science;
 The value of field residence, unhurried participant
observation, and conversations;
 The importance of attitude, behavior and rapport;
 The emic-etic distinction;
 The validity and importance of ITK.
Field Research on Farming System
 Have contributed to the appreciation and
understanding of
 Complexity, diversity and risk-proneness of many
farming system;
 The knowledge, professionalism and rationality of small
and poor farmers;
 Their experimental mindset and behavior;
 Their ability to conduct their own analysis.
Rapid Rural Appraisal
 Has three main origins:
 Disappointment: anti-poverty bias, rural development
tourism.
 Disillusion with questionnaire surveys and their confusing
results;
 Cost-effective.
From RRA to PRA
What’s in it?
 Secondary sources
 Time line and trend
 Semi-structured
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interviews
Key informants
Groups of various
kinds
Do-it-yourself
They do it
Participatory analysis
of secondary sourcesaerial photographs
Participatory
mapping and
modeling
Transect walks
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and change analysis
Oral histories and
ethno-biographies
Seasonal Calendars
Daily time use
analysis
Livelihood analysis
Participatory linkage
diagramming
Institutional or Venn
Diagramming
Well being and wealth
grouping and ranking
Analysis of difference
 Matrix scoring and
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ranking
Estimates and
quantification
Stories, portraits and
case studies
Team contracts and
Interactions
Presentation and
analysis
Participatory
planning, budgeting,
monitoring
Group discussions
Where it is applied?
 PRA applications include:
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Natural Resource Management;
Agriculture;
Poverty and Social Programs;
Health and
Food Security Analysis.
 Project Cycle
 From inception to end.
 Participatory projects pull methods, attitudes and values from
PRA.
 ‘Micro projects’
Practical Example
 VGDUP- Vulnerable Group Development for Ultra-
poor
 What are the indicators?
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Owning less than 10 decimals of land(0.04 ha)
No ownership of production assets
There are no active adult male house hold members
Employment, if any is limited to day-laboring or domestic help
The household is de facto headed by a women (divorced, abandoned, widow,
unmarried)
 PRA in this project
 Wealth ranking among the candidates
Whose Participation?: The criticism
 “... much of what currently passes as 'participatory' involves local
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people taking part in other people's projects, according to agendas
set by external interests.” (Cornwall 1996)
Remained donor driven and ‘imposed’.
Lack of proper training distorts the overall objectives of this
approach.
Methods are often used to extract info’s rather than to empower.
Even the term ‘carpet-bombed with PRA’ came forward due to its
over utilization.
Shortcomings of some methods like community meetings and
widespread use of group discussion.
Bibliography
 Lilja , Nina and Mauricio Bellon ; Some common questions about participatory
research: a review of the literature, Development in Practice, Volume 18,
Numbers 4–5, August 2008.
 Chambers, Robert; The Origins and Practice of Participatory Rural Appraisal.
World Development, Volume 22, No 7, pp 953-969, 1994.
 Chambers, Robert; From PRA to PLA and Pluralism: Practice and Theory,
Working Paper 286, IDS, 2007.
 Cornwall, Andrea; Towards participatory practice: participatory rural appraisal
(PRA) and the participatory process in De Koning, Korrie and Martin Marion
(1996). Participatory Research in Health: Issues and Experiences. Zen Books
Ltd., London.