PRA Training Workshop

On July 27-30, 1999, Development Alternatives held a training workshop for its staff members entitled, "PRA: Applications to Population and Environment Issues." The venue for the workshop was DA’s appropriate technology demonstration centre, TARAgram, located in Orchha, Madhya Pradesh. This workshop served as a follow-up training to another workshop held in April 1999 that addressed gender concepts and research tools.

The primary purpose of the workshop was to help strengthen DA’s internal capacity to conduct participatory research using PRA methods. At the same time, the workshop theme was chosen in order to highlight population and environment issues relevant to DA’s work to promote sustainable development, and identify PRA methods and tools that can be used to explore the linkages between these issues with communities.

The main objectives of the workshop were to:

1) Explain the working principles that underlie good PRA practices;

2) Familiarize workshop participants with the range of PRA methods available;

3) Explore how PRA can be used to examine linkages between population and environment issues; and

4) Apply and test the participants’ newly acquired knowledge of PRA in the field.

The workshop participants included the DA professionals from New Delhi, Jhansi/Orchha and Bangalore offices who supervise or conduct primary research activities in order to plan, implement, or monitor and evaluate community-based development projects. The Institute for Participatory Practices (PRAXIS) provided the trainer, Mr. Anindo Banerjee, for the workshop.

What is PRA?

Participatory rural appraisal defies any final definition as it is constantly evolving. However, a useful description of PRA used by Robert Chambers is ‘a family of approaches and methods to enable people to share, enhance and analyse their knowledge of life and conditions, to plan and to act.’ In some ways, the term "PRA" is a misnomer because, today, PRA is no longer confined to just being "rural" or just being "appraisal", since it has been effectively used with urban communities and often involves analysis, planning and action in addition to appraisal.

PRA, as an example of a participatory approach to conducting community-based research, often requires a paradigm shift among social science researchers. The trend it exemplifies is the movement from development for the people to development by the people. It demands that researchers yield their knowledge, categories and values to the community members’, who may have a completely different perspective on the issues at hand.

One of the most important aspects of a good PRA practice is to create a sense of ownership among the participants of the information generated. It is incumbent upon the facilitators to promote an environment that is comfortable and conducive to the uninhibited sharing and exchange of information. This requires that the facilitators carefully monitor their own attitudes and behaviour and learn to step back or "hand over the stick" to the community participants.

On a cautionary note, the nature of the information gathering and analysis process of PRA inevitably creates expectations among the participants that subsequent action will be taken. PRA facilitators must be sincere in their intentions to follow-up any initial PRA exercise with future activities.

A Menu of Methods to Choose From

During the course of the workshop, participants were introduced to an extensive list of PRA methods. The methods covered can be classified under three headings: space-related methods; time-related methods; and methods for specific purposes or relationships.

Space-related PRA methods include different types of mapping activities, such as resource, social and mobility maps. The purpose of mapping is to provide a bird’s eye view of a village or community and/or the surrounding area. The map can then serve as a point of reference for discussion for both the facilitators and the community members. The map can also serve as an important baseline document.

Time-related PRA methods range from historical analyses to cross-seasonal comparisons and hourly breakdowns of daily tasks. Some of the methods learned include: seasonality diagram; activity profile; timeline; trend analysis; and genealogy diagram.

One of the great advantages of PRA is its flexibility – once a practitioner is familiar with the basic methods, s/he can easily adapt them for use with a wide range of topics and with diverse sets of people. But first the researcher must understand and delineate very clearly what the information needs are.

Similar to other research approaches, PRA has certain limitations, which the workshop participants identified and discussed. For example, maps cannot be used to map a very large area; and it is necessary to preserve maps drawn on the ground quickly and accurately. In addition, trend analysis is not intended to generate specific numbers or accurate percentages, but rather provide a sense of the direction and degree of change in the issues of interest over time. Also, when using a matrix, there could be additional criteria (not included in the matrix) that could change the overall scores and ranks.

Tips for Using PRA

The training workshop offered several practical tips about applying PRA in the field. First, a PRA team should consist of at least three people performing the following roles: observer, note-taker, and facilitator. The ideal number of team members is four or five. More than five people can be intimidating and counter-productive in many cases. But having more than three people is useful in the event you need to depute one of the team members to deal with any problems that may arise.

Second, it is not uncommon during the course of conducting group PRA exercises to be confronted by a disruptive participant. These people may include: "dominators"; "gatekeepers"; and intoxicated people. A dominator is someone who dominates a group exercise and presents his/her point of view as the prevailing one, often persuading others to offer this opinion as their own. The person may be the sarpanch of the village, or be better educated, or have some other characteristic that s/he believes entitles him to a greater degree of influence. Similarly, a "gatekeeper" is also someone who biases the group process, in this case by assuming the role of a self-appointed leader who controls group interactions and decides what information can be passed along to the facilitator.

Third, it is important to triangulate PRA findings, as it is with traditional survey research. Triangulation means cross-checking the data collected with at least two other sources to verify the validity and reliability of the findings. In many cases, a tradeoff between high precision and comprehensiveness of an exercise and other factors may be useful. For instance, a lower level of validity and reliability may be acceptable in order to decrease costs and/or improve the timeliness and relevance of the information. But it is important to avoid systematic biases of the results. There are several types of biases that may be introduced into the PRA process and compromise both the validity and reliability of the findings. These were reviewed by the workshop participants, some of which include: personal bias; using a heterogeneous group; using a convenience sample; .community bias; agency bias; gender bias; facilitator bias; and time/seasonal bias.

Practising in the Field

A field practical, during which the participants could apply the new PRA methods they had learned about while simultaneously collecting information of use to DA program planners, was an important aspect of the PRA training workshop. The fieldwork took place over a two-day period in two nearby villages where DA had previously worked. Workshop participants were divided into two teams to conduct the research. Each of the teams developed their own research design – choosing the issues to be studied and the corresponding PRA methods to be used. This preparation entailed taking into consideration and balancing several factors:

Upon returning from the field, the two teams wrote short narratives to accompany their PRA visuals and presented the information to the plenary.

Observations about the PRA Process

During the post-fieldwork debriefing session, the workshop participants’ offered several suggestions about using PRA in light of their field experience:

Impact of the Workshop