1. Notes on Participatory Rural Appraisal techniques (PRA)

PRA is about a group of local people analyzing their own needs and conditions and choosing their own means of improving them.

The principles are as follows:

• Optimising trade-offs, relating to cost of learning to the useful truth of the information, with trade-offs between quantity, relevance, accuracy and timeliness. This is based on the notion of optimal ignorance – knowing what is not worth knowing.

• Offsetting biases such as those of space, gender, season and protocol. This can be done by not rushing, listening not lecturing, being unimposing instead of important, and seeking out the poorer people.

• Learning from and with rural people, directly, on the site and face-to-face.

• Learning rapidly and progressively, not following a blueprint program but adapting in learning process.

PARTICIPATORY TECHNIQUES

1. Rich pictures

Purpose : To make a pictorial representation of all the things that need to be taken into consideration or are important to a particular situation. This helps you to see all the interactions and connections between different stakeholders and issues and is a way of making sure nothing important gets left out of your thinking. This is a good way for a group to come to a broad, shared understanding of a situation.

Description : Using a large sheet of paper and symbols, pictures and words, draw a rich picture of the situation (project/group) you wish to evaluate. It is often best to start by putting down all the physical entities, for example, people, organisations or aspects of the landscape that are important. Then ask what are the key relationships between the entities that have been depicted. This is best done with about four to eight people and takes a half to two hours.

2. Brainstorming

Purpose : To quickly gain a lot of ideas from a group without getting caught up in detailed discussion.

Description : Ask the group to think of as many ideas as they can about the topic in question, then go around the group asking each person to briefly state their idea. Don’t let the activity get bogged down in detailed discussion or debate. Everybody’s ideas should be treated equally at this stage. Once they are all up, then there can be some analysis. The ideas can be captured using the mind mapping or card techniques. This can be done in small or larger groups and can take from five minutes to one hour, depending on the subject, detail needed and number of people.

3. Visioning

Purpose : To develop a shared vision of what a group would like the outcome of a project or evaluation exercise to be. This helps people think creatively and let go of immediate problems. It is also a way of finding common ground between conflicting interests.

Description : Ask people to describe how they would like things to be in the future. It is possible to do this in an imaginary way. For example, ask people to imagine they are giving a presentation at a conference at some point in the future describing why their project has been successful. This can be done with from one individual up to a large group and the time taken varies accordingly.

4. Questionnaires and surveys

Purpose : To gain information from a large number of people in a structured way according to specific questions.

Description : Questionnaires and surveys can range from being very simple to quite complex. The terms questionnaire and survey are often used interchangeably, however, if a distinction is to be made a questionnaire is a form of questions people fill in, while a survey is a more general term that might include this as well as face to face or telephone interviews. Unlike semi-structured interviewing, surveys follow a very specific and structured set of questions. Questionnaires and surveys will usually require some professional help to make sure that they are worded correctly and can be properly analysed. They are a good way of gathering quantitative information but often reveal less about people’s perceptions and concerns.

5. Mind mapping

Purpose : To cluster similar ideas, to see links between them and to pick out the most important issues when discussing or brainstorming. As in rich picturing, this is a good way of making sure all aspects of a situation have been considered.

Description : On butchers paper or a whiteboard, start with the central issue or question and then build a dendrogram (like a tree) of ideas from the central question. You can put down the most important or higher order things first and then build on these.

6. Cause and effect mapping

Purpose : To explore the contributing causes or reasons for a particular problem or issue and to help identify root causes rather than symptoms.

Description : Cause and effect mapping works like mind mapping but rather than a tree diagram create a fishbone diagram showing primary causes on the main branches and secondary causes on the sub-branches. You can use this technique to brainstorm ideas or to help analyse and organise information.

7. Historical analysis

Purpose : To understand the history and background to a situation or project. It is a valuable way of exploring how change has occurred, why things are the way they are and why different groups or individuals hold the views they do.

Description : Set up a large sheet of butchers paper with rows and columns. Put dates down the side and beside them put topics such as key local events, key external events, influence of local personalities/groups, major changes (social, environmental, economic) and key trends. With a group, fill in the table that has been created. It is usually best to complete the trends for each time period as a way of rounding off the exercise. This takes from one to several hours and can be effective with quite large groups.

8. Locality mapping

Purpose : To draw on the knowledge of local people to develop a map of the local area. This is a good way, for example, of identifying who is undertaking land conservation activities, where land degradation problems are and where improvements have been noticed.

Description : Using large sheets of butchers paper, draw the outline of the local area, for example, roads, towns, rivers and property boundaries. This can be done by projecting an overhead map onto butchers paper and tracing the required information. Having prepared the map, which could be as large as a whole wall, people can then add their information either directly or by using sticky notes.

9. Focus groups

Purpose : To collect general information about an issue from a small group of selected people through group discussion.

Description : A broad question, for example : ‘What impact do you think the landcare group has had in achieving sustainable land use?’ is given to a group of about eight to discuss for one or two hours. There is minimal intervention by the focus group facilitator other than to make sure everybody has a say. The discussion is either recorded or detailed notes are taken and then later analysed.

Focus groups should be conducted in pairs : one person to facilitate the discussion and the other for note-taking.

10. Semi-structured interviewing

Purpose : To gain information from an individual or small group, such as a family, on an issue.

Description : Semi-structured interviews are guided conversations where broad questions are asked, which do not constrain the conversation, and new questions are allowed to arise as a result of the discussion. This is different from questionnaires and surveys where there are very structured questions that are not deviated from. A semi-structured interview is therefore a relatively informal, relaxed discussion based around a predetermined topic.

It is usually best to conduct such interviews in pairs with the person doing the interview and one taking detailed notes. The process of a semi-structured interview involves the interviewer presenting the context of the study and its objectives to the interviewee or interview group (such as a family or household). The set of questions are prepared but open, allowing the interviewees to express opinions through discussion. Questions are generally simple, with a logical sequence to help the discussion flow. Interview questions should be tested prior to interviews. Training people to conduct a semi-structured interview is important and practice is required to become an effective interviewer. Training needs to address team preparation, interview context, sensitive listening, sensitive questioning, judging responses, recording the interview and self-critical review (Pretty et al. 1995). Interviews usually take about one hour.

11. Flow diagrams

Purpose : To illustrate and analyse the consequences (positive and negative) of particular issues or actions using diagrams.

Description : Take the action to be considered, for example, the employment of a property management planning coordinator, and map out the steps that need to be taken and the factors that need to be taken into account.

12. Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis

Purpose : To identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in relation to a project or group.

Description : This can be done as a brainstorm in a small group or workshop setting or it can be done as an analysis and synthesis of other information. If asking a small group to do a SWOT analysis, about three-quarters of an hour will be required.

13. Institutional linkage (Venn) diagrams

Purpose : To illustrate the extent to which individuals, organisations, projects or services interact with each other or overlap and the importance of each, and their efforts, to the issue being evaluated.

Description : Each entity is represented by a circle. The larger the circle the more important it is, the closer circles are to each other the more interaction there is. Large circles represent powerful organisations, overlapping circles represent interacting organisations and a small circle within a larger circle represents a component of that organisation. The diagrams may be created using cut out circles or by drawing.

The group may combine their diagrams and discuss any differences. Further discussions may tackle issues such as conflict resolution or organisational capacity building. For example, the support provided to a landcare group by a range of agencies and individuals could be represented in this way.

14. Information tabulation and graphing

Purpose : To represent information in a way that makes it easy to comprehend and analyse. For example, tabulating the number of different types of activities run by a landcare group or graphing the amounts and sources of funding.

Description : Decide what form of information will provide the greatest insight for the purposes of the evaluation and organise the information in this way.

15. Matrix analysis

Purpose : Rank the value of a particular activity or item according to a range of criteria. For example, a range of different landcare group activities could be assessed against a set of criteria such as attendance rate, cost and value to members.

Description : First decide what is that you want to compare, then determine what criteria will be used. Then each item can be scored against the criteria. If some criteria are deemed more important they can be given extra weight. The totals can be added to show which is the most beneficial item.

16. Issue analysis

Purpose : To identify the major issues that have been raised by people from a range of other tools, such as focus groups and semi-structured interviews, and then to group these into major themes. This process is important in making sense of a lot of qualitative information.

Description : Go through the notes or recordings of the particular activity and identify the major issues that a group or individual has raised. Common issues from a range of activities, individuals and groups are then grouped and the underlying theme that links the issues together is identified. It is possible to measure the number of times a particular issue emerges and hence provide some quantified results from qualitative information.

17. Card technique (organising and ranking information, also called delphi – technique)

Purpose : To cluster, organise and rank information. This is one of the most useful and widely used techniques in workshop settings because of the ease with which many ideas can be quickly collated and organised.

Description : This is generally used in a small group or workshop although it can be used by an individual trying to analyse information. Each idea, issue or piece of information is written on a card (or sticky note). Like items are then grouped together and a name or description given to each cluster. Having done this, it is possible to rank each cluster. There are many different ways of organising this activity.

18. Interrelationship diagrams

Purposes : To identify which out of a series of contributing causes are the most important and how they relate to each other.

Description : On a whiteboard or butchers paper, write down in a circle between five and 20 factors contributing to, or causing, a problem or issue. Examine each factor in relation to each of the other factors and ask, ‘Is it caused by or a cause of the other factor’. If it is caused by the other factor, draw a line with an inward arrow between the pair, if it is the cause of the other item, draw a line with an outward arrow between the pair. Draw the arrow only in the direction of the strongest effect, do not have two-way arrows. If there is no interrelationship do not draw a line between them at all. When you are finished, the factors with the most outward arrows will show up as the drivers. These will generally be the factors that will drive change; focus attention on them.

This technique can be used to stimulate discussion in a group, analyse information and determine priorities.

19. Nominal group technique

Purpose : To enable a group to quickly develop a ranked list of problems, issues or actions.

Description : Develop a list of the problems, issues or actions that need to be ranked. Express each as clearly as possible to avoid confusion. Each person then ranks the statements according to what they see as the priorities. Each person should give the highest number (if there are six statements the highest number will be six) to their highest ranked statement and the next highest number to their next highest priority and so on through the list. The rankings from each person are added up. The total scores for each statement will enable them to be put in order of importance. This can be done in small or large groups and can take from 15 minutes to an hour depending on the size of the group and how much debate there is over the initial statements.

20. Action planning

Purpose : To identify the specific tasks, resources, timetables and responsibilities required to achieve a particular objective.

Description :

Develop a table with tasks, resources, due date and responsible persons across the top and then complete the details for all the tasks that will be required to achieve a particular project objective.