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PRA ApplicationDr. Hamidul Huq

Participatory Rapid Appraisal Participatory Rural Appraisal

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A family of approaches and methods to enable rural people to share, enhance, and analyse their knowledge of life and conditions, to plan and to act (Robert Chambers, 2002).

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PRA is used for:• Needs assessment• Feasibility studies• Identification priorities for dev. Activities• Monitoring and evaluation• Participatory Research

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PRA Method

Focus Group Discussion (FGD)• Focus Group discussion is a method being

widely applied for qualitative research to gather information from a homogenous group of people.

• In qualitative research, it is important to assess/understand people’s feeling, attitudes, perceptions, reactions and emotions, for which FGD is suitable.

PRA Application/Dr. Hamidul Huq 5Is this FGD???

PRA Application/Dr. Hamidul Huq 6Is this FGD???

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• Focus Group Discussion (FGD) is a social research method to gather qualitative information from a homogenous group to address particular issues.

• FGD is used to extract people’s sensitivities/feelings, attitudes, perceptions, reactions and emotions about issues, which are untouched in survey method.

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Characteristics of FGD:

• No specific questionnaire but a guideline is used in FGD;

• No quantitative but qualitative data can be collected through FGD;

• Homogenous group of people are the participants in FGD;

• Not large but a small number (10-12) participants;

• Identified group of people;

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• Participants from same characteristics; • Facilitation to interaction and discussions

among the participants;• FGD is a semi-structured group

discussion;• FGD is for collecting data related to

specific objectives;• It is the method of discussion not

interview.

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Steps in FGD

• Researcher is to frame the objectives specifically

• Prepare guidelines• Identify the participants • Prepare materials• Select a suitable venue• Plan facilitation process• Data processing.

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PRA Tools

Social mapping: mapping of social situation of a village – habitation pattern, institutions, socio-economic characteristics, e.g., literacy, land-holding, livestock-holding, occupation, health status of the families.

Purpose: - help the villagers understand social (geographically) arrangement in the village.

- it serves as baseline data on socio-economic conditions

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Resource mappingA map to depict resources of the entire village

area; mostly natural resourcesPurpose• To show different resources in the village related

to livelihoods.• To list all the resources and visualise them.• To understand the uses and importance.• To serve as a basis for the transect walk.

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Transect walk: • A walk by the facilitators along with few

villagers around the area on a predetermined path that representatively covers all types of resources of the village.

• This walk is to look at and physically judge the state of resources.

• The team focuses on soil, water, forest, and agriculture.

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Purpose of Transect walk : to increase understanding of the community about various natural resources available in and around the village.

• To create awareness about local resources and their use in livelihoods.

• To initiate discussion about resources.

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Timeline• This tool is used to trace history of the village

area.• It is usually an oral exercise, recalling important

events/incidents, time gaps.Purpose• To get an overview of the history of the village.• To initiate thinking process in the villagers.• It can act as a guide to identify and analyse

social and natural changes in the village.

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Seasonality Analysis

• This tool is used to list and analyze villagers’ work in different seasons, e.g., crop production, temporary migration, etc.

Purpose: This tool is used to know/understand the variations in terms of livelihoods, resource availability, social issues, etc.

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Institutional Mapping

• This tool is also known as Venn Diagram. Using this tool with the villagers, the researcher can depict the institutions and their interrelations in and around the village. It shows degree of importance, linkages and intensity of linkage.

Purpose: This tool is used to develop an understanding about different institutions.

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• Event analysis is one of the tools of participatory research.

• Often it is called ‘significant event analysis (SEA)’.

• SEA is a way of sharing stories in a systematic way for service improvement

Event Analysis

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• SEA is mainly used as an approach to self-evaluation with staff and can be adapted for work with service users.

Principles:• Inclusive/involving the whole team• Holding regular meetings to discuss

events• Focus on system improvement rather than

the individual.

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Approaches:• Using stories• Using comments, compliments and

feedback• Qualitative in-depth interviews