Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) describes a growing family of approaches and methods
to enable local people to share, enhance and analyze their knowledge of life and conditions, to plan
and to act. PRA has sources in activist participatory research, agroecosystem analysis, applied anthropology,
field research on farming systems, and rapid rural appraisal (RRA). In RRA information is more
elicited and extracted by outsiders; in PRA it is more shared and owned by local people. Participatory
methods include mapping and modeling, transect walks, matrix scoring, seasonal calendars, trend and
change analysis, well-being and wealth ranking and grouping, and analytical diagramming. PRA applications
include natural resources management, agriculture, poverty and social programs, and health and
food security. Dominant behavior by outsiders may explain why it has taken until the 1990s for the analytical
capabilities of local people to be better recognized and for PRA to emerge, grow and spread.