Participatory rural appraisal tools
What PRA is, its origins in RRA, principles such as handing over the stick and triangulation, mapping, calendar and ranking tools, with an example.
On this page
For decades, rural development projects were planned by outsiders using questionnaires that took months to analyse and often missed what villagers themselves saw as their problems. Participatory rural appraisal (PRA) turned this around: local people map, model, rank and analyse their own situation, using simple visual tools, while outsiders listen and learn. The results are quicker, often more accurate, and owned by the community that will act on them.
PRA principles and tools are standard material in extension, rural development and social science courses and exams.
From RRA to PRA
- Rapid rural appraisal (RRA) emerged in the late 1970s and 1980s as a faster, cheaper alternative to long surveys, using semi-structured interviews, direct observation and secondary data. Outsiders still gathered and analysed the information.
- Participatory rural appraisal, developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s and associated especially with Robert Chambers at the Institute of Development Studies in Sussex, shifted the analysis to local people, often using visual methods that do not require literacy.
- Participatory learning and action (PLA) is a later term stressing that appraisal should lead to action.
Principles
- Handing over the stick: outsiders facilitate, local people draw, rank and analyse.
- Learning from and with local people, respecting their knowledge.
- Optimal ignorance and appropriate imprecision: collect only what is needed, as precisely as is useful.
- Triangulation: cross-check information using different tools, sources and groups.
- Offsetting biases: seek out women, the poor, the landless, the young and the old, who are often missed, and avoid only visiting roadside villages in the dry season.
- Self-critical awareness and attitudes of respect, patience and listening.
- Visual sharing: maps and diagrams on the ground or paper let everyone see and correct the information.
The main tools
Space
- Social map: households, castes or groups, services and wells drawn by villagers, often used for wealth ranking.
- Resource map: land uses, soils, water, forests and grazing areas.
- Transect walk: walking through the village with local people, noting soils, crops, problems and opportunities in each zone, summarised in a transect diagram.
Time
- Timeline: key events in the community's history, such as droughts, floods, new roads, epidemics.
- Trend analysis: how yields, rainfall, forest cover or prices have changed over years.
- Seasonal calendar: rainfall, workloads, food availability, prices, diseases and income through the year.
- Daily activity profile: how women, men and children spend their days, often revealing heavy, unseen workloads.
Relationships and priorities
- Venn (chapati) diagram: circles of different sizes for institutions, showing their importance and closeness to the community.
- Flow diagrams and problem trees: causes and effects of a problem.
- Pairwise ranking: comparing problems or options two at a time.
- Matrix ranking and scoring: comparing varieties, trees or technologies against criteria chosen by farmers, such as yield, taste, drought tolerance, market price and labour.
- Wealth ranking: villagers sort households into wealth groups using their own criteria.
Conversation
- Semi-structured interviews with individuals, key informants and focus groups, using a checklist rather than a fixed questionnaire.
Pairwise ranking of farmers' problems
A group of farmers lists four problems: A low prices, B water shortage, C pests, D poor roads. Each pair is discussed and the group chooses the more serious:
| A | B | C | D | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | B | A | A | |
| B | B | B | ||
| C | C |
- Times chosen: B = 3, A = 2, C = 1, D = 0.
- Ranking: water shortage first, then low prices, pests, poor roads.
With n items there are n(n − 1) ÷ 2 pairs: here 4 × 3 ÷ 2 = 6 comparisons. Repeating the exercise separately with women and men often shows different priorities, which is an important finding in itself; for example women may rank water first because they spend hours fetching it.
Running a PRA exercise
- Prepare: agree the purpose with the community, form a mixed team of outsiders and local people, and review secondary data.
- Fieldwork: several days of mapping, walks, calendars, ranking and interviews, with separate sessions for women, men, youth and poorer households.
- Analyse together: share and correct the diagrams in village meetings.
- Plan action: rank priorities and draw up a community action plan, with roles and follow-up.
Strengths and criticisms
Strengths:
- Quick, low-cost and visual, including people who cannot read.
- Builds local ownership and leads more naturally to action.
- Reveals local knowledge, priorities and differences within communities.
Criticisms:
- Can be done superficially, as a ritual to justify decisions already made.
- Public meetings may be dominated by powerful people and hide conflicts and the views of the marginalised.
- Raises expectations that projects may not meet.
- Results are hard to aggregate or compare across many villages.
Careful facilitation, working with separate groups, triangulation and genuine follow-up address many of these problems.
Key points
- PRA lets local people analyse their own conditions using visual, participatory tools; it grew from RRA, associated with Robert Chambers.
- Principles: handing over the stick, learning from local people, optimal ignorance, triangulation, offsetting biases, self-critical awareness.
- Space tools: social and resource maps, transect walks; time tools: timelines, trends, seasonal calendars, daily activity profiles.
- Relationship and priority tools: Venn diagrams, problem trees, pairwise and matrix ranking, wealth ranking.
- Pairwise ranking needs n(n − 1) ÷ 2 comparisons.
- Weaknesses include elite capture and superficial use.
What the exams ask
- School-leaving and entrance papers: meaning of PRA and examples of tools.
- Degree and research-fellowship entrances: RRA versus PRA, principles, the purpose and method of each tool, and limitations.
- Professional examinations: planning a PRA exercise, gender-sensitive participatory methods, and linking PRA to village development plans.
Described in general terms: the kind of examination, not a past paper. Laisha never reproduces exam questions.
Questions people ask
How is PRA different from a questionnaire survey?
A questionnaire asks fixed questions of individuals and is analysed by outsiders. PRA uses flexible, visual group methods in which local people analyse the information themselves.
Can PRA results be trusted?
They are more reliable when information is triangulated across tools and groups, and when facilitators make sure that women and poorer households are heard.
What is a transect walk?
A walk through the village area with local guides, observing and discussing land, crops, soils, water and problems in each zone, then drawing them as a cross-section diagram.
Sources
- Chambers, R. "The origins and practice of participatory rural appraisal." World Development 22, 953–969 (1994).
- Chambers, R. Whose Reality Counts? Putting the First Last. Intermediate Technology Publications, 1997.
- Pretty, J. N., Guijt, I., Thompson, J. and Scoones, I. Participatory Learning and Action: A Trainer's Guide. IIED, 1995.
- Kumar, S. Methods for Community Participation: A Complete Guide for Practitioners. ITDG Publishing, 2002.
- Cooke, B. and Kothari, U. (eds) Participation: The New Tyranny? Zed Books, 2001.
More in extension and rural development
Discussion
Questions, corrections and notes from readers on this article. Every comment is checked before it appears: keep it on the topic, and do not share phone numbers, links or contact details.