Participatory Appraisal

Participatory Appraisal (PA) is an approach to learning about communities that places equal value on the knowledge and experience of local people and their capacity to come up with solutions to problems affecting them.

P.A. is a growing collection of methods, tools and techniques for interacting with people in a way that enables everyone to share and contribute their skills and experience and knowledge of life. It’s a creative learning process that involves a team of local people, people from local groups and services and organisations all with different backgrounds and experience working together. It involves people in a cycle of activity, finding out, checking out and working out solutions.

Advantages

The ethos underlying PA leads to shared ownership of research projects
It encourages community based analysis of problems, so might lead to creative .
The method is orientated towards community action;
It can lead to community involvement in the decision making processes;
It can build community capacity in an area because of the training that this method requires and so develops longer-term sustainability

Disadvantages

Agencies need to recognise the contribution of local people in this process and not ‘use’ P.A. as a cheap alternative to other consultation work.
Requires lots of commitment from the local people involved, often without much recognition or reward.
Greater need to use the results as local involvement and expectations have been raised. Can lead to cynicism and bad P.R. if results are unused.
Timing of P.A. research needs to fit into planning cycles e.g. access to funding, local action plans.

When to use

When you need a community's perspective on an issue.
When you want to grow community capacity and confidence by valuing and nurturing their input into the research process. BUT this takes time and effort.

You may be able to tap into a wealth of local knowledge and "people resources" by encouraging local people to get involved into this type of consultation. For instance, a community group may want to consult with their own neighbours, young people with their school friends etc. People will need support with training and administration costs. Contributions should be valued and it is good practice to offer some reward for this kind of work, either pay, in-kind, or free training to take part in this sort of project.

PA usually uses a combination of methods to collect information, for example street interviews alongside informal focus groups, organised events and questionnaires. It rarely relies on one method of consultation. Important lessons can be learnt by statutory agencies in how they consult by looking at P.A. as an example of good practice.

An essential part of P.A. research is the verification process, which enables participants to verify and extend upon the initial findings. Verification not only seeks to inform local people about any proposals, it also helps validate findings by ensuring triangulation (cross checking) of the information gathered between all groups involved.