Extension Education · Unit 9
Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA)
The methods that hand the pen to the villager, the principles behind them, and how PRA differs from RRA.
Where it came from
PRA grew in the late 1980s out of Rapid Rural Appraisal, which had itself been a reaction to two unsatisfactory alternatives: the long, expensive questionnaire survey, and what Robert Chambers called rural development tourism, the brief visit that sees only what is near the road and near the season.
The shift from RRA to PRA is a shift in who does the analysis. In RRA outsiders collect information quickly and analyse it themselves. In PRA local people do the mapping, the ranking and the analysis, and the outsider facilitates.
Principles
- Handing over the stick. The villagers draw, list and score; the outsider watches and learns.
- Optimal ignorance and appropriate imprecision. Do not measure more precisely, or find out more, than the decision requires.
- Triangulation. Cross-check using different methods, different informants and different team members.
- Offsetting biases. Deliberately go further from the road, later in the season, and towards the people who are not in the meeting.
- Self-critical awareness. The facilitator continuously examines their own behaviour and its effect on what is said.
- Seeking diversity. Look for the outlier and the contradiction rather than averaging them away.
- Sharing. Information belongs to the community and is left with it.
The main tools
| Tool | What it produces |
|---|---|
| Social map | Households, facilities, and who lives where |
| Resource map | Land, water, forest and their use |
| Transect walk | A cross-section of the village with soils, crops and problems |
| Seasonal calendar | Rainfall, labour, income, expenditure, disease across the year |
| Daily activity schedule | How a day differs for women and men |
| Time line | The village's own history of major events |
| Trend analysis | Change over time in yields, wages, water table |
| Venn or chapati diagram | Institutions and how important and close each is |
| Wealth or well-being ranking | Local categories of who is better and worse off |
| Matrix scoring and ranking | Comparison of varieties or practices on local criteria |
| Cause and effect diagram | Problem analysis in the community's own logic |
| Mobility map | Where people go, how far, and how often |
PRA compared with RRA
| RRA | PRA |
|---|---|
| Outsiders analyse | Local people analyse |
| Extractive | Empowering |
| Information is taken away | Information is owned and kept locally |
| Used mainly for appraisal | Used for appraisal, planning, action and monitoring |
| Outsider is the investigator | Outsider is the facilitator and convenor |
Limitations
- Dominant voices can capture the exercise, so the map reflects the powerful.
- It is time-consuming when done properly, and often is not done properly.
- Raising expectations that no follow-up programme can meet.
- Facilitator skill varies enormously and determines the quality of the output.
- Results are not statistically generalisable, and were never meant to be.
Points to carry into the exam
The lines from this topic that recur in the paper.
- Robert Chambers is the name attached to both RRA and PRA. Rural development tourism is his phrase.
- The core distinction: RRA is extractive, PRA is empowering; the difference is who analyses.
- Optimal ignorance and appropriate imprecision are frequently asked as a pair.
- Be able to list at least eight PRA tools with what each produces.
- Triangulation means cross-checking by method, source and investigator.