Programme Planning, Implementation and Evalution

PROGRAMME PLANNING, IMPLEMENTATION AND EVALUATION 2(1+1)

Lesson 30 : Participatory Rural Appraisal – PRA

Principles

PRA is based on five key principles as stated below:

1. Participation – It depends heavily on participation by the communities, as the method is designed to enable local people to be involved, not only as sources of information, but also as partners with the PRA team in gathering and analyzing the information.


Participation by Village Women as a Source of Information along with the Extension Workers

2. Flexibility - The combination of techniques that is appropriate in a particular development context will be determined by such variables as the size and skill of the PRA team, the time and resources available, and the topic and location of the work.
   

3. Teamwork - Generally, a PRA is best conducted by a local team using local languages in presence of few outsiders in which there is a significant representation of local women of different socio-economic status and age and a mix of sector specialists and social scientists.
   

4. Optimal Ignorance - To be efficient in terms of both time and money, PRA work intends to gather just enough information to make the necessary recommendations and decisions. It deals with collection of only needed information.

5. Systematic - As PRA-generated data are largely qualitative in nature and relatively have small sample size, these are seldom conducive to statistical analysis. Therefore, alternative ways have been developed to ensure the validity and reliability of the findings. These include sampling, based on approximate stratification of the community by geographic location or relative wealth, and cross-checking, using a number of techniques to investigate views on a single topic through a final community meeting to discuss the findings and correct inconsistencies.