Transcript Document

PRA Techniques
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Techniques
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Transect Walk
Timeline
Social Mapping
Seasonal mapping
Venn diagram
Matrix ranking
Pair wise ranking
Well being ranking
Applied to all techniques
• Who can be the facilitator?
• Understand the basic issue in question thoroughly
• Conduct the PRA at the place where the target group
lives and at a time convenient to them
• Explain the objective of the exercise to the participants
A good representative group of participants is a must to gather
meaningful and unbiased data
Transect
• It is mostly used for the appraisal of natural resources in terms of status,
problems and potential. It provides a cross-sectional representation of the
different agro-ecological zones.
• This has also been used for the depiction of various social aspects, such as,
the caste and ethnic determinants of a settlement.
• Verification of issues raised during other PRA exercises .
• Serves as an important entry point for the PRA facilitators into the
community in an un-intrusive and non-threatening manner.
• Types of transect Paths
– Walk from a high point across to a low point in the area
– Just a straight line walk from one extreme point of the area to the other.
– To get more detailed view of the area, an S-shaped transect walk is also
undertaken
Key steps
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Locate a group of local people having some knowledge of the area and who
are willing to walk with you for the exercise. Explain the purpose of the
study.
Go along with the people at the prefixed time on the already decided
transect path.
Observe the surroundings. If necessary, stop at certain locations for
detailed discussions on the points emerging. It also gives you a breather
and time to note down details.
After returning, draw a transect on a large sheet of paper. Let the local
people take the lead in drawing the transect diagram. Use your notes and
the notes of other members of the transect team while making the diagram
It is not uncommon to have two transects done for the same area- one by
local men and another by local women. What is very striking s the different
perspectives the two transect produce.
The path, as far as possible, should remain the same for different transect
walks. It helps in making the date more comparable. If you want the
coverage to be detailed, you can select more than one path and have the
same and different team do the transect walk.
Timeline
• It is used to explore the temporal dimension from a historical
perspective. It captures the chronology of events as recalled by
local people
• Time line provides an aggregate of the various landmark events
as perceived by the local people.
• Helps to learn from the community what they consider to be
important past events, the historical perspective on current
issues and to generate discussions on changes with respect to
issues you are interested in such as economic conditions
Key steps
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Identify some elderly persons in the village, explain the purpose of the
exercise.
The key questions:
• When was the village established? What are the important events in
the history of the village? What major changes took place? What
are the reasons for these changes?
Make a note of the key points un brief in cards in bold letters.
Once you feel that the list is more or less complete, ask them to keep
the cards in a chronological order- the earlier events on the top and the
later events lower down.
Read out the events and ask them whether they are happy with the
order.
Add years to the left side of the list of events.
Triangulate with other elderly persons in the village to see the
correctness of the information given in the time line. Secondary
sources of information can also be used.
Concept of time
Social mapping
• It seeks to explore the spatial dimensions of people’s realities.
• Developing a comprehensive understanding of the physical and
social aspects of village life. Collecting demographic and other
required information household wise
• Social mapping is different from other maps as it is not drawn
by the experts but by local people, and it is not drawn to scale.
• It depicts what the local people believe to be relevant and
important to them. It reflects their perceptions of the social
dimensions of their reality with a high degree of authenticity.
• Serves as a guiding instrument during the process of planning
interventions. Serves as monitoring and evaluating tool.
Explain the purpose of the exercise to the participants. Request them to
start the process. Ask them to draw the physical features of their locality.
Leave it to them to use whatever materials they choose- local as well
as other materials- the aim is to make it as creatively as possible
Watch the process carefully. Listen to the discussions carefully. While they are
drawing, take notes in as much detail as possible.
Once the mapping is over, ask some villagers to identify their houses in the
map. Number the households and ask the details for each household. Note
it down. It will be useful for gathering data later
In case you need more details, you
can list the households serially ,
and the names of their heads and
other required details can be
written on separate sheets of
paper. The very participants who
made the map can compile the
information right at the site of
mapping. Hence, we need not
move from house to house to
collect the details.
Cards are also used to collect
details. To this end, have a card
for each household. Write down
the number of the household as
also the name of the person
heading it.
Wide range of materials
and varying time period
You can use different types of seeds (poker coins) to learn about different household
wise information, such as, members migrated to other cities. Ask them to put as many
seeds in the figure of each house as would represent the number of members migrated
to other cities for livelihood. Record the details on paper using symbols, designs, and
color codes immediately. Other information that can be captured include provision of
electricity, drinking water supply in households etc
Challenges
• Sometimes the non-literate participants are hesitant to start the
mapping. Lack of confidence, fear of ridicule by others and the
belief that maps can be made by the experts are some of the
reasons. The use of expensive looking marker pens and paper
turn out to be a barrier.
• Effective in small and medium sized localities having around
80-100 households. In bigger villages and slums, it has not been
so easy.
– Mapping at different location for various parts
– Mapping by representatives of various parts
Seasonal mapping
• Seasonal mapping is used for temporal analysis across annual
cycles, with months or seasons as the basic unit of analysis
• It depicts the perceptions of the local people regarding
seasonal variations on a wide range of items.
• Seasonal diagram helps to identify heavy workload periods,
periods of relative ease, credit crunch, disease, food
availability, wage availability etc. Identifies periods of stress
and to plan for when intervention is most required.
• Identifies and analyses the livelihood patterns across the year.
Start a discussion on the present season and the work they have been doing during
the season. Draw a grid with the required number of columns. Ask them to
identify a unique characteristic or symbol for each month.
Now on the vertical axis, take the aspects whose seasonal variations
you are interested in exploring. E.g, availability of daily wage labor
during various months.
An Example
Category
/Months
Crop
Cultivation
(Paddy-only
crop they
practice)
Number of
working days in
month
Female
Male
Wage
Labour
outside
the village
(Iron rod)
Disease
April
Weeding
15
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20
Chicken pox
May
Harvesting
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20
Headache
June
Free Land
-
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20
Festival
Education
Temple
Festival
Admission
Fees
Upto Vth- 1500
Upto VII- 3000
July
August
September
Ploughing
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15
20
Sowing
20
20
20
Headache
Transplantation
20
20
20
Headache
Category
/Months
Crop
Cultivation
Number of
working days in
month
Wage
Labour
outside the
village
(Iron rod)
Disease
Festival
Diwali
5000 Rs.
Female
Male
Weeding
15
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20
Cold
November
Use of
Fertilizers/
Urea
-
15
20
Chikungunya,
Fever
December
Use of Pesticide
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15
20
Chikungunya,
Fever
Shabrimala
25 Families
2000 per family
January
Harvesting
15
15
20
Headache
Pongal
150-1000 Rs.
February
Ploughing
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15
20
Sowing
15
15
20
October
March
Shivratri
200 Rs.
Chicken Pox
Education
People’s concept of time
• People have their own systems and units of time. It is important for the
facilitators to first understand the system of time of the local people.
– A few facilitators find it difficult to arrive at the local concept of time.
Imposing your own time frames generally spoils the whole process.
• The key questions helpful in arriving at the patterns of local seasons and
individual months can include:
– What month/ season is this?
– What are the other months/seasons?
– What is the sequence of the months/seasons?
– What are the major activities during the different months/seasons?
Dimensions
• If you are interested in running a credit programme
with the community, you can look at the seasonal
variations with respect to
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Wage employment
Food availability
Expenditure
Credit requirement
Festivals and other social occasions requiring expenditure
Inputs for agriculture: sowing and harvest seasons
Others
Venn Diagram
Venn diagram is useful to study and understand local people’s
perceptions about local institutions, individuals, programmes
etc.
Particularly useful to study and analyse:
• Various institutions and individuals and their influences on the
local people
• Various groups and individuals in the locality and their
influence.
• Relative importance and usefulness of services and
programmes
Ask the participants to list the various institutions , which are
assigned in different sizes of the circles.
Size of the circle is proportionate to perceived
importance- i.e., big circle more important
Distance from the centre is proportionate to
access, i.e., less distance means easier access
An Example
Matrix Ranking
• Useful to arrive at comparative understanding of
various items of certain characteristics of a selected
group.
• Helps develop an in-depth understanding of the
decision making process of people.
Identify the topic on which you want to develop an in-depth understanding of the pattern of decision making on a number
of different criteria. Identify the individuals with whom you would like to do the matrix. Initiate a discussion on the
topic.
In this case, we tried to understand the credit savings matrix of 8 women
List down the various options. The next step is to arrive at the
criteria. We can use pair-wise comparison of the options to arrive at
the reasons for their preference.
Draw up a matrix with the objects (here women) across the top and the criteria
down the side (here credit information)
This method helps both the participant and the facilitators
understand the underlying financial behavior of the clients for the
preferences as well as the decision making process
Pair-wise Ranking
• Helps analyse priorities and preferences of a group
• Helps in understanding people’s decision making
processes
• Process:
– Compares two items at a time and carries on until each item
has been compared with the other
– Final analysis is based in the frequency of times each of the
items have been ‘preferred’ over the other
Understand the top 6-8 issues in hand and set up the matrix
Taking two issues at a time, ask the group to
chose between the two options at each stage
In the total section, calculate the frequency
of each item. This total helps identify
priorities
Well being ranking
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Used for ranking and grouping households and communities on the basis of
income/livelihood, wealth and other perceivable well being criteria such as
educational attainment, food security etc.
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It is based on the perception of the local people. It helps to understand the local
people’s conceptions of wealth, well-being and their views on socio-economic
disparities between households. Note: the ranking is relative and not absolute
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Helpful to explore issues like: livelihood, vulnerability, constraints to development
as people perceive them, and to design intervention strategies in line with people’s
aspirations.
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To study inter-household and inter-group socio-economic disparities and to
understand how the local people view them.
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Well being ranking is generally done with key informants. The selection is made
based on the basis of their knowledge about the different households.
Following from the Social mapping exercise, make a list of households. The names of the head of households are written on separate
cards. A group of key informants with good knowledge of the village are then asked to rank the household.
Let the participants do the ranking on their own. Ask the participants to sort
out the household cards into representatives categories of wellbeing. Ensure that the participants discuss among themselves and
arrive at the well-being categories.
As the participants arrange the household cards, ask them why they
have placed the cards in a particular order. This gives you the criteria
participants are using to do the well being ranking
Card Sorting Method: If small villages with household ranging from
30-40, ask the participants to arrange the households in descending
order of well-being, i.e., highest to lowest on well being
Note down the numbers and the names of the head of the households falling under each category of well being. Add the necessary basic details on
each household card. Also prepare a category wise list of the households with details of the assets, income , occupation etc
The Statistical Model
Group of
Informants
Well-being
Category
Household no
falling in the
category
Score
1
I (rich)
10,4,14,19,13,5,18
1/3=0.33
II
1,6,9,15,20,7,17
2/3=0.66
III
2,8,12,16,3,11
3/3=1
I(rich)
19,14,4,6
1/5= 0.20
II
10,5,18,13,1,15
2/5= 0.40
III
9,20,7,17
3/5= 0.60
IV
16,8,11
4/5= 0.80
V
2,12,3
5/5= 1
I
14,6,1,15,12
¼= 0.25
II
4,9,13,5,18,10
2/4= 0.5
III
7,17,20,19
¾= 0.75
IV
8,11,16,3,2
4/4=1
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a table where the household numbers are put serially and then the scores each household gets from the three key informants is
indicated. Calculate the average of the there scores and put it in the last column
Card
(household
no)
Group of
Informants 1
Group of
informants 2
Group of
informants 3
Average
Score
1
0.66
0.40
0.25
0.43
2
1.00
1.00
1.00
1.00
3
1.00
1.00
1.00
1.00
4
0.33
0.20
0.50
0.34
5
0.33
0.40
0.50
0.41
6
0.66
0.20
0.25
0.37
7
0.66
0.60
0.75
0.67
8
1.00
0.80
1.00
0.93
9
0.66
0.60
0.50
0.59
10
0.33
0.40
0.50
0.41
So on…..
(The higher the average score, that poorer the household)
Challenges
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As well-being ranking relies heavily on cards
marked with the names of HH, the non-literate
don’t find the process very participatory. A
common practice- one of the participants reads
the names on the cards aloud. However,
problem of sensitive nature of the information
that is being handled and processed
Well being ranking is based on the assumption
that the key informants are knowledgeable
about the relative well-being of all households
in their locality. This assumption might prove
to be incorrect in certain cases. In large
localities, it is difficult to find participants who
know about different groups. This holds true
for urban and semi-urban areas.
Wealth, income, assets etc are generally
considered sensitive topics and are not
discussed openly in many communities
Expectations of the participants on the
outcome