Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
leaders, or running focus groups in which certain groups, such as women or lower
caste members, feel unable to speak. Sensitive issues like health problems or
incomes cannot always be discussed effectively in groups. Literate, well-educated
people may find the PRA approach patronising. Others may find the technique
threatening and be uncomfortable about speaking openly, for example, mixed
groups in strongly gender-divided societies or people in repressive political regimes.
Finally, PRA is essentially a qualitative research methodology, and so it can be diffi-
cult to analyse the results and make generalisations. This means that it may be
more appropriate as an initial approach to understanding the issues, before carry-
ing out more detailed surveys of individuals based on the knowledge gained.
Box 3.1
Example of a PRA technique—wealth ranking.
Wealth ranking is useful for (1) giving insight into the complex meanings sur-
rounding the concept of wealth for a community; (2) stratifying your sample for
household surveys if it seems likely that the parameter of interest (i.e. natural
resource use) is related to household wealth; (3) providing a single variable repre-
senting household wealth, which can be used in quantitative analyses.
A typical procedure would be:
●
Identify three focus groups in the community (perhaps women, men and
elders, to give a spread of perspectives), made up of three to four people. The
numbers should be small, as wealth is a sensitive subject, which may not be
good for large-scale discussion.
●
Write an identification number for each household in the community and
the name of the household head on separate cards. This may be usefully
linked to a map.
●
For each focus group, start with a discussion of the concept of wealth in the
community—how does it connect with livelihood activity and household
structure (widows, young families with many dependents, people with
grown-up children sending remittances home?), how is it expressed (house
construction, piped water, mobile phone?) and what influences it (health,
alcoholism, work ethic, financial skills?). Do people recognise the concept of
wealth as opposed to income, and of financial wealth as opposed to well-
being? Often wealth is quite an alien concept, particularly in poor subsis-
tence-based societies.
●
Ask the focus group to divide the household cards into two piles—those
known to at least two members of the group and those not known. Only rank
the known households, and it is best not to ask them to rank the households
of people in the group.
●
Ask the group to discuss how best to divide the pile into groups of house-
holds of approximately the same wealth. Record the criteria that they decide
upon. Generally it is easier for them to divide the households into wealth
