Resources

This study investigates issues of gender and resource management in Siquijor island in the Philippines. A rapidly growing population, severe environmental degradation and declining economic growth means that rural women and men are often forced to make short-term decisions about managing natural resources which are not necessarily appropriate for the long-term sustainability of the resource base or of their families. The study analyses gender roles in rural livelihood systems in order to clarify the ways in which rural people are responding to these problems, and to give direction to future efforts to assist these processes. The research methodology involved the complementary use of PRA techniques and more conventional survey methods. For example, wealth ranking was used to ensure that the household survey sample proportionately represented the range of household circumstances in each community. The results of the wealth ranking and household interviews were then used to help formulate questions for key informant interviews, focus group meetings and a short confirmation survey. Other PRA methods used included transects, mapping, seasonal calendars and institutional analyses.

This paper describes a game and a story that were presented during the workshop to show how PRA can "help people to address and resolve conflict". The TASO game (described in the appendix) was used to illustrate current HIV transmission rates in Uganda. The story showed how PRA exercises conducted by Redd Barna in Zimbabwe brought out women's and men's different views of a proposed irrigation scheme. The potential for PRA to help resolve such conflicts is the emphasis placed on "the value of good communication skills". Development workers need to learn "facilitation and arbitration skills" in order to deal with, rather than "glossing over" conflict and "failing to acknowledge the political dimensions to all our interventions". Psychological stress (particularly in relation to HIV and AIDS) also needs to be recognised as "a valid development issue".

The Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) had two main objectives: i) to assess the effectiveness of participatory methods as a means of collecting baseline information; ii) to identify indigenous indicators of women's health and wealth status. A 'smorgasbord' of participatory methods were used; social and demographic mapping; health and wealth ranking; timeline and focus group discussions; key informant interviews and life histories of women. Fieldwork was conducted in a village where the BRAC had been active for five years and another where it had been involved for six months. Participatory methods were confirmed as a means of gathering information 'quickly and relatively accurately.' A 'remarkable consistency' emerged as to indigenous indicators of women's status from which BRAC constructed a seven component measure of household well-being: food security; land ownership; types of income; agricultural assets; homestead condition; days off work due to illness and education.

This community handbook is designed to help health workers address three questions: i) How do you measure community malnutrition? ii) What are the food problems in your community? iii) Which problems should you attack? A series of appendices describe various practical ways of measuring child development. Health workers are encouraged to analyse and act upon the various socio-economic causes of ill health. An extensive list of further information sources is provided, with little emphasis on methodology.

This paper opened an international conference on Rapid Assessment Procedures (RAP). The author describes some of the main themes emerging from a decade of RRA and RAP. It is claimed that RAP has "launched some social sciences on a path of methodological re-tooling". RAP is viewed as a new force changing the development planning process and development planning process and development activities at community level. Examples are given of both the powers and the pitfalls of the RAP technique. Two sets of risks are examined: 1) intrinsic - connected with accuracy; representativeness; cultural inappropriateness; subjectivity 2) extrinsic - arising from failing to give RAPs a proper place or weight within a research strategy. It is concluded that RAP techniques complement rather than replace conventional quantitative techniques.

This publication is the outcome of a workshop sponsored by the Canadian IDRC which examined the research methods available to rapidly generate information on community nutrition problems. Paper One (see Cervinskas. J, 1990) is an introduction which offers explanations for the failures of conventional scientific research in nutrition. Paper Two describes RRA and RAP as methodologies suited for making nutrition research more relevant (see Kachondham. Y, 1990) Paper Three discusses RAP for community-based Assessment and Analysis. (see Hurtado. E, 1990) Paper Four is a case study of a sociological approach to nutrition problems in Java. Paper five assesses nutrition problems in India using RRA methods. The summmary concludes that RRA and RAP techniques are complementary to conventional, qualitative methods.