Participatory Rural Appraisal: extending the research methods base

The rapid acceptance of Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) approaches to facilitate the understanding of problems among rural people, and the acknowledged priority for such studies to be sensitive to local conditions, has sometimes meant that such approaches have overlooked opportunities for the appropriate application of relevant techniques. PRA and its forebears have for some time incorporated quantification or classification techniques such as matrix ordering or ranking (with considerable success), but with only limited incorporation of more complex analytical tools. This paper suggests that there are methods which, if sensitively incorporated into the PRA framework, can add value to current PRA-based studies, without compromising the ownership of the research or the validity of the outputs. An example is presented from Nepal, where conjoint analysis was used to help farmers to assess their rice variety requirements. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.