Knowledge Democracy / Participatory Research

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Welcome to the Knowledge Democracy / Participatory Research Community. This community serves as a comprehensive repository of resources on participatory approaches, community-based research, and collaborative inquiry methods. Our mission is to foster knowledge sharing and support initiatives that empower communities to contribute to research, ensuring their voices shape the knowledge that impacts their lives.

Explore a wealth of materials, including case studies, policy papers, training guides, and research publications that highlight the practice and principles of participatory research worldwide.

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    Participatory impact assessment. August 20- 25, 2001
    (Particiaptory Research in Asia (PRIA), 2001-08-25) Dwivedi, Anju
    How can development interventions be made more accountable to the people they are meant to serve? In this paper, Anju Dwivedi examines how participatory impact assessment can reframe conventional approaches to evaluation by placing communities at the center of the process. She begins by tracing shifts in development thinking from a focus on economic growth in the 1950s to an increasing emphasis on participation and human development by the 1990s, where people’s involvement became central. Dwivedi argues that social development is not a linear process that can be captured through simple output and outcome measures. Impact must instead be understood as change from a given starting point, including intended and unintended effects on people’s lives. Participatory impact assessment therefore becomes a continuous process across the project cycle, engaging communities and other stakeholders in defining indicators, collecting data, and interpreting findings. The paper also foregrounds the importance of integrating a gender lens to understand differentiated impacts. For practitioners and researchers, this paper offers a grounded way to rethink impact assessment as a political and learning process rather than a technical exercise.

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