Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) was developed in response to criticism that historically local people have been given little voice in the planning of development projects.

PRA can be defined as a versatile set of methods that enable people in a community to collect and analyze information related to their life conditions and to develop a plan of action to organize, implement, and evaluate community action.

Philosophy

PRA takes a multi-disciplinary, holistic approach to planning and development. Local people are viewed as teachers, not subjects. Related to this is the importance of indigenous technical knowledge as a valuable source in planning projects which are sound and sustainable.

Flexibility plays a key role in PRA. A blend of techniques and methods are applied depending on group expertise, community interests, and available resources. The PRA group adopts a progressive learning approach, and therefore expects to change plans, attitudes and priorities in the course of the learning process.

Three important principles guide the data collection process:

1. Optimal Ignorance/Appropriate Imprecision: accepts that certain things are unknowable, or if knowable, require great time and resources to ascertain. Directs attention at the most valuable information that can be gathered with minimal investment.
   


2. Seek Variation: Aberrations and anomalies within a given context serve to enhance our understanding; furthermore, such variations broaden our perspective of the possibilities within the context.
   


3. Teamwork: the data itself arises from human interactions. It is therefore vital to maximize productive interactions between all team members. A wellbalanced team will represent the diversity of socioeconomic, cultural, gender, and generational perspectives.
   

Methods

Though PRA, by its nature, does not require a strict set of methods and rules for its implementation, a number of techniques have proven useful in a variety of situations. Some of the PRA methods can be defined as follows:

Analysis of Trends — The PRA team analyzes historical, seasonal and life cycle patterns through case histories, seasonal calendars, maps, and photographs.

Community Workshops — can be used as a way to cross check data, or to do group activities like Venn diagrams, preference rankings, taxonomies, etc.

Key Informants — crucial to project success, key informants are community members with useful insight, perhaps because of age, education, or certain life experiences. The PRA team makes a concerted effort to identify and use key informants.

Mapping and Modeling — Agricultural Innovations uses GIS to support the participatory decision making process because people understand graphics more easily than tables for many types of problems. In addition, local people provide important insights into the development of geographic data.

Semi-structured Interviews – this format allows priorities to be addressed, while giving the interviewee freedom to express ideas of importance.

Triangulation – cross-checking data from three sources and/or methods. Triangluation reduces error and broadens perspectives.