Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA)

Rapid Rural Appraisal consists of a series of techniques for "quick and dirty" research that are claimed to generate results of less apparent precision, but greater evidential value, than classic quantitative survey techniques. The method does not need to be exclusively rural nor rapid, but it is economical of the researcher's time. It is essentially extractive as a process: the agenda is still that of the outside researcher.

RRA (and analogs) emerged in the 1970s as a more efficient and cost-effective way of learning by outsiders, particularly about agricultural systems, than was possible by large-scale social surveys or brief rural visits by urban professionals. It drew on many of the insights of field social anthropology of the 1930s-1950s, emphasized the importance and relevance of situational local knowledge, and the importance of getting the big things broadly right rather than achieving spurious statistical accuracy. It developed a style of listening research, and a creative combination of iterative methods and verification, including "triangulation" of data from different sources - using two different methods to view the same information. It was usually conducted by a multi-disciplinary team, and its chief techniques included:

Review of secondary sources, including aerial photos, even brief aerial observation Direct observation, foot transects, familiarization, participation in activities Interviews with key informants, group interviews, workshops Mapping, diagramming Biographies, local histories, case studies Ranking and scoring Time lines Short simple questionnaires, towards end of process Rapid report writing in the field.

Dangers and drawbacks

The range of techniques can be effective, but it remains fundamentally an extractive, externally-driven process. Many researchers who use standard RRA methods claim that they are using PRA, when the "participation" is restricted to provision of information to the researcher by the community. The simple test is what is the value added and who owns the product. If the community draws a map because you ask them to, it's RRA. If they realize that the map belongs to them, and want to keep it for their own use, then it's PRA.

Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA)

More an eclectic situational style (the humble, learning outsider) than a method, the Participatory Rural Appraisal is distinguished at its best by the use of local graphic representations created by the community that legitimize local knowledge and promote empowerment.

Emerging in the 1980s, PRA "proper" builds on RRA but goes much further. To RRA it adds some more radical activist perspectives, deriving principally from South Asia. Its five central additional concepts are:

Empowerment. Knowledge is power. Knowledge arises from the process and results of the research that, through participation, come to be shared with and owned by local people. Thus the professional monopoly of information, used for planning and management decisions, is broken.

New local confidence is generated, or reinforced, regarding the validity of their knowledge. "External" knowledge can be locally assimilated.

Respect. The PRA process transforms the researchers into learners and listeners, respecting local intellectual and analytical capabilities. Researchers have to learn a new "style". Researchers must avoid at all costs an attitude of patronizing surprise that local people are so clever they can make their own bar charts etc. The "ooh-aah" school of PRA works against its own principles of empowerment and indicates shallow naivete on the part of the researcher. A good rule of thumb is that when you can really understand the local jokes, poetry and songs, then you may feel you are starting to understand the people's culture.

Localization. The extensive and creative use of local materials and representations encourages visual sharing and avoids imposing external representational conventions.

Enjoyment. PRA, well done, is, and should be, fun. The emphasis is no longer on "rapid" but on the process.

Inclusiveness. Enhanced sensitivity, through attention to process; include marginal and vulnerable groups, women, children, aged, and destitute.

Dangers and drawbacks

Because of the diversity of research questions which can possibly be posed in this project, there are few prescriptions other than that PRA, well done, is a promising way in. The term PRA itself can cause difficulties: PRA need not be rural, and sometimes is not even participatory, and is frequently used as a trendy label for standard RRA techniques. Despite its limitations, the concentrated power of formalization of community knowledge through participatory techniques can generate an impressive amount of information in a relatively short space of time, leaving time for more selective structured formal surveys where they are necessary and of value. If PRA becomes part of the global development agenda, there are risks of:

"Hijacking". When this occurs, the PRA agenda is externally driven, and used to create legitimacy for projects, agencies and NGOs.

Formalism. The "PRA hit team" arrives in a local community to "do a PRA". This abrupt and exploitative approach is all too common in project-based PRAs where there is a deadline to meet, or in scheduled training courses.

Disappointment. Local expectations can easily be raised. If nothing tangible emerges, local communities may come to see the process as a transient external development phenomenon. Threats. The empowerment implications of PRA, and the power of its social analysis, can create threats to local vested interests, although less so than with PAR.

Participatory rural appraisal (PRA) is an approach used by non-governmental

organizations (NGOs) and other agencies involved in international development. The

approach aims to incorporate the knowledge and opinions of rural people in the

planning and management of development projects and programmes.

Origins of participatory rural appraisalThe roots of PRA techniques can be traced to the activist adult education methods

of Paulo Freire and the study clubs of the Antigonish Movement. In this view, an actively

involved and empowered local population is essential to successful rural community

development. Robert Chambers, a key exponent of PRA, argues that the approach

owes much to "the Freirian theme, that poor and exploited people can and should be

enabled to analyze their own reality."[1].

By the early 1980’s, there was growing dissatisfaction among development experts with

both the reductionism of formal surveys, and the biases of typical field visits. In 1983,

Robert Chambers, a Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies (UK), used the

term Rapid Rural Appraisal to describe techniques that could bring about a 'reversal of

learning' [2]. Two years later, the first international conference to share experiences

relating to RRA was held in Thailand [3]. This was followed by a rapid growth in the

development of methods that involved rural people in examining their own problems,

setting their own goals, and monitoring their own achievements. By the mid 1990’s, the

term RRA had been replaced by a number of other terms including ‘Participatory Rural

Appraisal (PRA)’ and ‘Participatory Learning and Action’ (PLA).

Overview of PRA techniquesHundreds of participatory techniques and tools have been described in a variety of

books and newsletters, or taught at training courses around the world. These

techniques can be divided into four categories:

Group dynamics, e.g. learning contracts, role reversals, feedback sessions

Sampling, e.g. transect walks, wealth ranking, social mapping

Interviewing, e.g. focus group discussions, semi-structured interviews,

triangulation

Visualization e.g. venn diagrams, matrix scoring, timelines

To ensure that people are not excluded from participation, these techniques

avoid writingwherever possible, relying instead on the tools of oral communication like

pictures, symbols, physical objects and group memory. Efforts are made in many

projects, however, to build a bridge to formal literacy; for example by teaching people

how to sign their names or recognize their signatures.

A 'new professionalism' for developmentA key idea that has accompanied the development of PRA techniques is that of a new

professionalism. Robert Chambers has explained this as follows:

“The central thrusts of the [new] paradigm … are decentralization and

empowerment.Decentralization means that resources and discretion are devolved,

turning back the inward and upward flows of resources and people. Empowerment

means that people, especially poorer people, are enabled to take more control over

their lives, and secure a better livelihood with ownership and control of productive

assets as one key element. Decentralization and empowerment enable local people to

exploit the diverse complexities of their own conditions, and to adapt to rapid change”.[4]

To be an external agent of change within this discipline implies two-way

learning.Development agents learn to both appreciate and lever the power of oral

culture and the transformations that are possible within it. Walter J. Ong has argued that

“many of the contrasts often made between ‘western’ and other views seem reducible to

contrasts between deeply interiorized literacy and more or less residually oral states of

consciousness.”[5]

The limits of PRAThere are those who see limits to PRA. This is on a range of grounds - for example that

it doesn't work, that it reveals the secrets of rural communities to be managed by

development agencies, or that it is a tool of cooptation into neo-liberal development

agendas. These were summarized in Participation: The New Tyranny? [6]