It is a way of quickly identifying main problems, opportunities or preferences as experienced by individual villagers or village groups. In initial stages, only the variation of problem ranking gives an idea of different interests or opinions, which can be compared and final consensus is made through discussion. This allows the participatory team to determine quickly the main problems or preferences of individuals and enables the priorities of different persons to be compared. For a group of people, a set of problems or preferences relevant to the community is selected. These could be e.g. farming problems, preference for tree species, diseases etc. in an area. A few respondents may be asked to give their opinion on a 5-point scale like most important, important, undecided, not so important and least important with scores 5,4,3,2 and 1 respectively. After tabulation of responses, ranking of items are obtained.
Participants