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This paper discusses the methods of collecting information in a field study carried out in Salvador da Bahia (Brazil) a suburb of Salvador. The study was part of a training exercise for students of the "International Course for Primary Health Care Managers at District Level in Developing Countries" based in Italy. The study also aimed to explore the potential for Primary Environmental Care and identify ways by which the local health district could support squatter communities. A rapid appraisal was carried out in three squatter communities. Secondary data was analysed, life history interviews were conducted, a "risk map" was drawn in which local participants geographically located problems, focus groups and ranking, key informant interviews, ten institutions with an interest in environmental issues were interviewed, and a feed-back meeting was held for all community members. It is concluded that RRA is well suited to study fast-changing environments, a potential danger of the exercise is taken to be undue expectation-raising of the local community. Finally "microplans" are introduced as a possible means of making RRA action oriented. Five pages are devoted to illustrations arising from the exercises.

SPEECH (Society for Peoples' Education and Economic Change) conducted a series of workshops on PRA for NGO and Government officials in Tamil Nadu, Southern India. The workshop at Manavarayanenthal focused on health, "to evolve new strategies in planning specific health projects". The training programme began with a session on the principles of PRA, followed by learning various PRA techniques in the community. Descriptions are given of each activity, including materials used, and an evaluation of the training programme as a whole. Findings are analysed in terms of the different responses of the NGO group and women's group, showing clearly the value of PRA approach in revealing the different kinds of knowledge and attitudes to health care.

The Women's Development Project (WDP) of CARE-Bangladesh trains women in 441 villages as local health educators. A mapping activity was conducted in a village in Tangail with thirteen of these women. In three "para" (neighbourhood) groups, the women drew maps using sticks and flour, showing the households that they worked with and which new health practices (family planning, latrine etc) they had adopted. The maps (which are given in Figure 1) made the health workers aware of their achievements and helped them plan for the future. The article ends with a list of uses of participatory mapping in WDP's work as a whole.

This paper describes the use of wealth ranking as part of rapid nutritional assessments undertaken between 1988 and 1989 in Darfur, Sudan by an Oxfam nutrition team. The assessments combined two techniques; wealth ranking, a technique to show people's own perceptions of differences in wealth, and conventional weight-for-height measurements of child malnutrition. The objective was to establish whether it was the poorer families who were more likely to have malnourished children. Contrary to expectations, poor nutritional status did not correspond with low wealth status as percieved by the people themselves. It was found that malnourished children were present in both rich and poor families in the three communities surveyed. This suggests that targetting food to households on the basis of socio-economic data may in some cases be inaccurate and wasteful. Wealth ranking was considered by the survey team to be far quicker than household interviews in previous surveys.

This article is an outline of a slide presentation on the use of PRA in family planning in Nepal. A time line was constructed of when different family planning methods arrived in the village. A pie diagram was used to show preferences for family planning methods, vasectomy was the most popular. A matrix was used to rank the reliability, availability, simplicity and side effects of each method.

The paper is divided into three sections: I) origins of PRA - its advantages and disadvantages; II) the potential applications of PRA in family planning, health and nutrition. This is discussed with specific reference to India and three stages of PRA development are envisaged i) techniques which are simple enough to be applied on a routine basis with local health workers acting as facilitators (verbal feedback on healthcare performance, recording of seasonal trends, village mapping and verbal autopsies). ii) techniques in category i) which work well might then be applied on a continuous basis to monitor and manage service performance iii) PRA is then used in a more formal way to facilitate research and development. III) suggestions are made on how PRA might be institutionalised, again using the Indian example. NGOs are considered to be vital to institutionalize the PRA process. The speed at which governments are able to absorb PRA techniques will be determined by the rate at which suitable NGO support for the process can be made available.