HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF PRA

● The philosophy, approaches and methods known as rapid rural appraisal

(RRA) began to emerge in the late 1970s. It had three main origins.
● The first was dissatisfaction with the biases, especially the anti-poverty
biases, of rural development tourism - the phenomenon of the brief rural
visit by the urban-based professional.
These biases were recognised Robert Chambers as
1. Spatial (visits near cities, on roadsides. and to the centres of
villages);
2. Project (where projects were being undertaken. often with special
official attention and support);
3. Person (meeting men more than women, elites more than the
poor, the users more than the nonusers of services, and so on);
4. Seasonal (going in the dry and cool rather than hot and wet
seasons, which are often worse for poor rural people); and
5. Diplomatic (where the outsider does not wish to cause offense by
asking to meet poor people or see bad conditions). These could
combine to hide the worst poverty and deprivation.
● The second origin of RRA was dissatisfaction with the normal
processes of questionnaire surveys and their results. Repeatedly the
experience was that questionnaires were too long, a headache to
administer, a nightmare to process and write up, unreliable in quality of
data obtained, and liable to lead to reports, if any, which were long, late,
boring and difficult to use.
● The third origin was more positive. Seeking more cost-effective
methods of learning was helped by the growing recognition by outsider
professionals of the obvious fact that rural people were themselves
knowledgeable on many subjects that touched their lives. What became
known as indigenous technical knowledge (ITK) was then increaSingly
seen to have a richness and value for the practical purposes of outsiders.
● Towards the end of the 1970s, though, most of those professionals who were
inventing and using methods which were quicker and more cost-effective than
questionnaire surveys, were reluctant to write about what they did, fearing for
their professional credibility.
● Debates about Participatory Rural Appraisal and Rapid Rural Appraisal
(henceforth PRA/RRA) began with a workshop on RRA organized in 1980 by
Robert Chambers at the Institute of Development Studies in Sussex.
That workshop brought together three distinct themes:

1. A populist concern to introduce a more ‘people-oriented’ dimension to

data gathering in rural development;
2. A practical focus on speed and efficiency in gathering such data
(so-called ‘rapid rural appraisal’) to deal, among other things, with the
perceived problem that development agencies were not going to wait for
anthropologists and others to complete time-consuming, in-depth
studies; and,
3. An interest in projective methods where the rural poor were offered
some scope to set the research agenda, influence the kinds of questions
asked by researchers, and perhaps control the results.
● Towards the end of the 1970s, though, most of those professionals who were
inventing and using methods which were quicker and more cost-effective than
questionnaire surveys, were reluctant to write about what they did, fearing for
their professional credibility.
● In the 1980s, in some places, the situation was transformed. The family of
approaches and methods known as Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA) gained
increasing acceptance. It began to be seen that it had its own principles and
accuracy.
● In the early 1980s, RRA was argued to be cost-effective, especially for gaining
timely information, but still with some sense that it might only be a
second-best.
● But by the mid-1980s, the RRA approaches and methods, when properly
conducted, were more and more eliciting a range and quality of information
and insights inaccessible through more traditional methods.
● RRA came out better by criteria of cost-effectiveness, validity and reliability as
compared to more conventional methods.
● An earlier attempt to list countries where RRA had been developed identified
12 in Africa, eight in South and Southeast Asia, three in Latin America, three
in Australia and the Pacific, and one in Europe.
● Perhaps more than any other movement, agro-ecosystem analysis in Southeast
Asia introduced new methods and established new credibility.
● In the mid 1980s, the University of Khon Kaen in Thailand was a world leader
in developing the theory and methods, especially for multidisciplinary teams,
and in institutionalizing RRA as a part of professional training.
● It was in 1989 that PRA came in practice for the first time in India and Kenya.
This term was coined by Robert Chambers. As the name suggests the emphasis
in this methodology was on “participatory”.
● While academicians and aid agencies have mainly used this method for
extraction of information, the NGOs and other field organizations are currently
using PRA methods for creating awareness and thereby gradually building
skill-based capabilities among the people at the grassroot level.
● The latter method has led to PRA techniques developing into PLA
(Participatory Learning & Action), which combines the principles of PRA
with action research.
● It emphasizes action as an outcome of the research in, which there is
commitment to participatory processes.
● In this way, people’s participation at every stage of the project contributes to
exploring the possibilities of fair distribution of benefits of the project among
all stakeholders.
● Participatory Learning and Action (PLA) is an umbrella term for a wide range
of similar approaches and methodologies, including Participatory Rural
Appraisal (PRA), Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA), Participatory Learning
 Methods (PALM), Participatory Action Research (PAR), Farming Systems
Research (FSR), and many others.
● The common theme to all these approaches is the full participation of people in
the processes of learning about their needs and opportunities, and in the action
required to address them.
These methods have proven valuable in a wide range of sectors and situations,
world over in both North and South. Participatory approaches can also bring
together different disciplines, such as agriculture, health and community
development, to enable an integrated vision of livelihoods and well-being.
They offer opportunities for mobilizing local people for joint action.