Community-Based Participatory Research

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Start date: 1990End date: 1999

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Now showing 1 - 9 of 9
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    Beyond "whose reality counts?" New methods we now need?
    (1997) Chambers, Robert
    Activities called PRA, and its equivalents in other languages, have evolved from a confluence, sharing and adaptation of methodologies, methods and participatory traditions. Synergies have generated new things to do and new ways to do them, including visual forms of analysis. A conjunction of conditions has produced an explosion of activities and applications, and spread to many countries and organisations - NGOs, Government departments, and even universities, and raising questions of ethics and of sharing methodologies. Coming from our different traditions, should we seek places of convergence and springboards for action? If so, could the concept of responsible wellbeing, and the question "Whose reality counts?" provide us with common ground? They fit with eclectic pluralism, a celebration of diversity, and democratic reversals of dominance. They raise shared issues of how we teach, learn, and construct realities, of dominant institutions and their cultures, and of personal power. They point towards responsible well-being for "uppers" being sought in empowering and privileging the realities of "lowers". Do we now have a phenomenal opportunity? We have participatory methodologies which are powerful, popular and self-spreading We have new space opened up by government and donor agency policies for participation and poverty reduction. Rapid spread has brought much bad practice. At the same time, PRA and other participatory methodologies have also shown a potential to contribute to changes at levels which are policy-related, institutional and personal To make the most of these opportunities invites sharing methods and experience between different traditions, and inventing new methods. Five methodological challenges now (May 1997) stand out as points of leverage. These are how better to 1. enable the realities and priorities of poor and marginalised people to be expressed and communicated to policy-makers 2. enable trainers to facilitate attitude and behaviour change 3. make normal bureaucracies more participatory 4. build self-improvement into the spread of participatory methodologies 5. enable people with power to find fulfilment in disempowering themselves Could it be that effective repertoires for these could lead to much good change? Could convergences and sharings of experiences and approaches among us contribute to such repertoires? Could we between us seize these opportunities in the new spaces which are opening up?
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    Building in dialogue between consumers and staff in acute mental health services
    (Systemic Practice and Action Research, 1998) Wadsworth, Yoland; Epstein, Merinda
    This paper describes some aspects of the methodology, material, and findings from a lengthy participatory action research engagement by a consumer organization in Australia, which was undertaken in collaboration with staff at a major public psychiatric hospital and then went on to involve "players" throughout the local state, and national mental health services system. A small first phase established a dialogic methodology for the exchange of experiences and thinking between staff and consumers. The purpose of the second phase of the research was to explore how consumers' voices might be heard, and how staff-consumer communication about that feedback, might be "built in" to ongoing organizational structure and culture. Systems thinking about defensive routines, silences, and voice-as-discourse is reported as offering a possible way of cracking the puzzle of the closed-loop cycle of claim/blame-defense-and-counter-claim/blame-defense that has been characteristic to date.
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    Report on PRA workshop held at Bidda Village
    (1994) UNNATI Organization for Development Education
    This report is about a study conducted in “Bidda” village about Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) methods in rural development planning. The participants included a workshop on PRA, which helped participants develop an understanding of the tools used for generating community knowledge, such as social mapping, resource mapping, transect walks, priority ranking, timelines and trends, service mapping, pie diagrams, and wealth ranking. In addition to providing knowledge about the tools, the workshop encouraged the participants to establish connections with local people, listen actively, ask open-ended questions, and value people’s community knowledge. The field study also helped participants learn how different PRA tools can collect comprehensive village information, including natural resources, livelihood resources, services available to the residents, and personal revenues and expenditures, and timelines and trends. The field study provided valuable insight into developing integrated community development plans for the study village based on the collective knowledge about the community. This research is a significant contribution to community planning, highlighting the importance of using participatory field study methods to generate community knowledge and promote rural development planning in Gujarat at the micro-level.
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    From margins to center? The development and purpose of participatory research
    (The American Sociologist, 1992) Hall, Budd L
    This article documents the development of the libratory stream of participa-tory research as experienced through the activities and connections of one of the key figures in the early development and dissemination of these ideas. It traces the developments in Tanzania in the early 1970s, through the establish-ment of the original Participatory Research Network to the elaboration of theoretical and political debates. It highlights the formulation and elaboration of participatory research as a contribution to social change in a variety of settings. It includes discussions of the feminist advance, the question of voice and the relationship of power to knowledge in transformative practice. It contains an extensive and historically valuable bibliography.
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    Notes on monitoring-fifth training workshop on participatory development. September 15-19, 1997
    (Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), 1997-09-19) Satyamurti, V.
    This learning material by Satyamurti V. examines the concept of monitoring as an essential ingredient of planning an activity. Its process involves the collection of information for implementing a programme, determining how the inputs are being used, and seeing whether deadlines are being met. It lists management, finance, and programme as different types of monitoring and discusses in detail the methods and utilisation of information to be collected for each type. The material further talks about process and impact monitoring, noting that all monitoring systems should include both. The steps and essential components of designing and managing a monitoring system are also laid out, starting from defining the main aim of the monitoring system, selection of relevant information, data collection and analysis, displaying and using the results, to finally deciding who should be involved in the process. It concludes with the idea that monitoring should be participatory, with information chosen, recorded, and analysed by all those involved, including people affected by the work.
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    Participatory training on coastal research study, Phase II: At all India catholic union federation hall, Madras, October 11–13, 1992
    (1992-10) Coastal Poor Development Action Network India (COPDANET); Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA)
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    Development projects in assessing empowerment
    (Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), 1998-07-20) Shetty, Salil
    This paper by Salil Shetty examines the conventional monitoring and evaluation approaches in development projects, provides its critiques, and explores alternative methodologies for assessing empowerment. The paper analyses and traces the evolution of the idea of conventional Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) from its roots in the Logical Framework Approach, with formal M&E mechanisms being set up in the early 1950s and rising in the 1970s. It documents how M&E efforts initially focused on physical inputs, outputs, and financial expenditure, but the failure of many development projects, and the emergence of the Basic Needs movement led to the addition of new management tools like Social Impact indicators. These efforts with participatory elements are however, noted to be under-researched. The paper presents a comprehensive critique of conventional M&E models, mainly from scholars who recognise the experimental nature of development projects and the unavailability of standard measures in social sciences. It also challenges the position of conventional M&E systems on the claims of reliability and validity, the claim of objectivity, and the claim of causality. Consequently, it talks about the rise of an alternative paradigm, which relies on naturalistic inquiry, subjectivist epistemology, and is holistic. The paper concludes by introducing participatory action research as a major stream of evaluation that also highlights Maguire's feminist critique that participatory research was itself steeped in patriarchy.
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    Participatory rural appraisal - A critique
    (SEARCH NEWS, 1992) Tandon, Rajesh
    As participatory methods have come to play an increasing role in rural development, Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) came to be regarded as a rapid survey method for collecting locally-based information for planning and monitoring purposes. This paper seeks to critically review PRA by situating it in relation to its precursor, Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA), and exploring the underlying assumptions of this now widely-used set of methods. The study argues that while PRA has been enthusiastically adopted by NGOs and funding agencies because of its potential to lower costs and speed up assessments, in many ways it promotes a “short cut” to understanding rural communities that makes in-depth analyses of villages processes and patterns difficult if not impossible. In addition, the paper explores the question of who benefits from PRA by suggesting that unless communities are able to define their own agenda and take charge of the process, PRA is likely to become just another form of external intervention. By raising such questions as these, the study seeks to promote further discussion on how PRA might be employed most effectively in rural development.