Elsevier

World Development

Volume 22, Issue 7, July 1994, Pages 953-969
World Development

The origins and practice of participatory rural appraisal

https://doi.org/10.1016/0305-750X(94)90141-4Get rights and content

Abstract

Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) describes a growing family of approaches and methods to enable local people to share, enhance and analyze their knowledge of life and conditions, to plan and to act. PRA has sources in activist participatory research, agroecosystem analysis, applied anthropology, field research on farming systems, and rapid rural appraisal (RRA). In RRA information is more elicited and extracted by outsiders; in PRA it is more shared and owned by local people. Participatory methods include mapping and modeling, transect walks, matrix scoring, seasonal calendars, trend and change analysis, well-being and wealth ranking and grouping, and analytical diagramming. PRA applications include natural resources management, agriculture, poverty and social programs, and health and food security. Dominant behavior by outsiders may explain why it has taken until the 1990s for the analytical capabilities of local people to be better recognized and for PRA to emerge, grow and spread.

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  • Cited by (0)

    This paper is the first in a three-partseries examining participating rural appraisal.

    This paper is based on the work and innovations of many people, too numerous to name, but I thank them all. For comments on earlier versions I am grateful to Tony Dunn, James Mascarenhas, Jules Pretty and two anonymous referees. Responsibility for errors, omission and opinions is mine alone.

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