Resources

The United Mission to Nepal (UMN) Animal Health Improvement Project (AHIP) has been training Village Animal Health Workers (VAHW) in Pokhara, Nepal for the last decade. During this time approximately 350 VAHWs have been trained. This article outlines some of the techniques that were used to evaluate the subsequent progress of the trainees. General village-level information was gathered using various participatory methods, including mapping, wealth ranking, production information, labour diagrams, proportional piling and annual disease calendars, transect walks and progeny histories. Semi-structured interviews were also carried out individually with male and female farmers and VAHWs to find out how the VAHWs assessed their own work and how the farmers viewed the service they received.

This report and bibliography is intended to provide ACORD programmes with information on the literature concerning participatory development methodologies in Africa. The report provides an overview of the literature and identifies key documents and methods, as well as outlining ACORD's experience in four countries. The bibliography includes ACORD reports relating to participatory techniques, and annotations of easily available selected materials which would be of most interest to ACORD programmes. A list of institutes and organisations that specialise in the development of participatory techniques is also provided.

This article starts from the thesis that farmers of different wealth even in the same areas will have different requirements and needs. This is illustrated by doing research on wealth and priority ranking with farmers in three villages in the Philippines - Pong-on, Barrack and Cogon. There are good descriptions of the free listing and card sorting methods of problem and need prioritisation. The project preparation phase is discussed in detail, and emphasized as a crucial part of PRA exercises. The paper concludes with the assertion that if agricultural research does not incorporate local priorities then interventions will be inaccurate and wasteful.

This paper presents a number of methodological innovations on RRA and PRA in the context of food security. It is interesting in the first instance because it reviews work done as a follow-up to a PRA workshop on household data collection for food policy needs. On the method front, there are examples of mapping, diagramming, ranking and how each method feeds into food policy decisions. An increased use of visual methods is highlighted, and the connected increase in participation in and ownership of the research by local people. Along with this is an increasing importance of qualitative data in food policy decisions. The paper also includes an introduction to and comparison of PRA and RRA. It concludes by commenting that an additional advantage of these methods is that they are cost-effective, but that this may bring a linked disadvantage - that PRA methods are used with the intention of "extracting" information.

This article briefly outlines the evolution of PRA from RRA. The three foundations of PRA - methods; behaviour and attitudes; and sharing - are discussed. The article concludes with some thoughts on potential for the development of PRA in the 1990s in the areas of training and education, particularly in universities; among senior officials and academics, to bring them face-to-face with rural people; and enabling local people to take command of their resources and to determine what fits their needs.

This paper is the third in a three-part series examining participatory rural appraisal. It reviews some of the practical and theoretical questions which have been raised as the spread of PRA accelerates. PRA approaches and methods are analysed in terms of how they have spread, quality assurance, dangers, potentials and strategies, and paradigmatic significance. Rapid spread has made quality assurance a concern, with dangers from "instant fashion", rushing, formalism and ruts. Promising potentials include farmers' own farming systems research, alternatives to questionnaire surveys, monitoring, evaluation and lateral spread by local people, empowerment of the poorer and weaker, and policy review. Changes in personal behaviour and attitudes, and in organisational cultures, are implied. PRA parallels and resonates with paradigm shifts in the social and natural sciences, in business management and development thinking.

This paper is the second in a three-part series examining participatory rural appraisal. It sets out to present and analyse the principles, insights, validity, reliability and modes of PRA, and to understand the nature of its power and popularity. The more significant principles of PRA concern the behaviour and attitudes of outsider facilitators, including not rushing, "handing over the stick", and being self-critically aware. The power and popularity of PRA are partly explained by the unexpected analytical abilities of local people when catalysed by relaxed rapport, and expressed through sequences of participatory and especially visual methods. Evidence to date shows high validity and reliability of information shared by local people through PRA compared with data from more traditional methods. Explanations include reversals and shifts of emphasis: from emic to etic, closed to open, individual to group, verbal to visual, and measuring to comparing; and from extracting information to empowering local analysts.