Key terms explained (Participatory Methods Archive)

This is legacy content from a previous version of the Participatory Methods website, which was written collaboratively by the (then called) Participation Team at the Institute of Development Studies.

This section contains definitions of some of the jargon – technical terms and uncommon phrases – that we have used elsewhere on the Participatory Methods site. But we have also added definitions of some of the tools, techniques and language you might encounter as you are reading through resources you have found on our database.

We will add entries to this section as the need arises, so if there is anything you would like to see included here, please let us know.

Actors

The term actors, used in the context of development and politics, is not about TV personalities or film stars. It is used to describe the range of different people who play a part in a particular development or political scenario. It might include donors, activists, NGO workers, participatory practitioners, researchers, community members, government officials and facilitators. These actors all work within complex webs of power and relationships which enable and constrain them. Being an effective practitioner of PMs means reflecting critically on these intricacies, and on ourselves as actors.

Appreciative Inquiry (AI)

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is a tool for organizational change. It focuses on what an organisation, group or community does well, rather than what it has problems with. An AI process asks what makes an organisation effective, productive and healthy, and seeks to appreciate and build on these strengths and assets. This in turn helps people to understand and value these positive aspects and to enrich their knowledge, curiosity and energy, allowing them to shape a better future.

Attitude and behaviour change

During the 1980s, when Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) was evolving rapidly and its use was becoming more widespread, many practitioners began to emphasise the paramount importance of attitude and behaviour change. This aspect of the approach became known as ‘the ABC of PRA.’ It refers for the need for more powerful people in a participatory process – whether they are external facilitators, government officials or local leaders – to change the way that they act in order to allow or create space for the less powerful to speak, and to ensure that they are respected and their opinions taken seriously.

Buzz Group

Buzz groups are a technique most commonly used in workshops. Participants break into pairs or small groups and have a short, intense discussion on a defined question.

Calendar

Making calendars is a useful method for exploring and recording information relating to particular time periods, whether year, season, month or week. They are particularly useful for understanding cyclic patterns of change and have been used to great effect to work with agricultural communities to understand the inter-related seasonal patterns of food insecurity, rainfall and labour.

Card Writing and Sorting

This versatile technique is often used as part of a participatory sequence. Participants note key points on cards, either in response to a presentation or a particular question, which are then collected and laid out on the ground. The whole group then engages in collective analysis by sorting the cards into different categories. This is a useful method for enabling participation, as many people feel happier writing than talking in front of a large group.

Citizen Engagement

Citizen engagement is a form of interaction between citizens and their governments. It can happen at any stage of the development or implementation of government policy and the delivery of public services, or be triggered by events in local areas. It can lead to a range of outcomes, including more effective services and more responsive and accountable states.

Citizen Report Cards

Citizen report cards are a way for public service users to report on service quality, adequacy and efficiency. They generate quantitative data which is used by civil society organisations to advocate for government accountability through media coverage and campaigning.

Citizens Jury

A citizens jury is a process that brings together a small group of volunteer citizens for several days to discuss, analyse and try to answer a controversial policy question. During the time that the jury sits, its members are presented with evidence on the question, and engage in debate with policy-makers and experts. They ask questions, have collective discussions, and finally reach a decision. The method is most often used as an approach to public consultation, and is a means of connecting citizens directly to research and policy processes.

Civil Society

Civil society is a public space between the state, the market and the household, in which ordinary people can debate and take action. Civil society organisations (CSOs) include, amongst others, community groups, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), labour unions, charities, faith-based organizations, professional associations and foundations.

Community Action Plan

Community action plans are a commonly-used tool in development projects. At their most basic, they identify a goal and a list of actions which will enable the community to reach that goal. They are often one of the outputs of a Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) exercise.

Community Score Cards

Community score cards are qualitative monitoring tools used for community-level monitoring and evaluation of services and projects, and to catalyse face-to-face meetings between service providers and community members.

Community-led Total Sanitation

Community-led total sanitation (CLTS) is a participatory method for mobilising communities to eliminate open defecation. It is about much more than just providing toilets, instead focusing on the behavioural change needed to ensure real and sustainable improvements in sanitation. Communities are facilitated to conduct their own appraisal and analysis of open defecation and take their own action to become open defecation free areas.

Context-Specific and Adaptive Approaches

Nuanced, tailored and adaptive approaches are essential to achieving the SDGs. National and sub-national contexts shift and vary, and societies comprise diverse individuals and households with different needs, capacities and priorities. Experience has shown that a single, static approach at scale over long periods does not always work: they do not reach everyone and often struggle to achieve sustainability.

As well as being nuanced, tailored and adaptive, programmes must also be area-wide, aiming to reach everyone across entire administrative areas. Area-wide approaches will require local (and national) governments to take the lead, display political leadership and match commitments with the necessary human and financial resources. More learning and thinking is needed to understand how to operationalise systems strengthening to enable this commitment.

To enable programmes to be designed to reach and meet the needs of everyone across entire areas, a thorough understanding of the context(s) is essential. Based on context analyses, appropriate implementation approaches and partners can be selected: it is likely that multiple approaches and partners will be required in any one area, and that these will need to be adapted and combined in different ways.

This evidence-based approach will also help identify communities and individuals at risk of being left behind. We have much to learn about how best to do this and programmes must remain flexible so that they can be adapted based on monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) as well as changing contexts.

Building strong MEL systems and rapid action learning (RAL) processes into programmes will support this process, helping to identify what works and what does not throughout every stage of the programme, and enabling adaptation and course correction. Investing in staff and institutional capacity to pivot, adapt and work with multiple approaches and partners is also key.

Crowd Wise

Crowd Wise is a process designed by the New Economics Foundation for situations where a black and white choice just isn’t possible: where it is important to harness the knowledge and imagination of everybody, not just the usual suspects; where a decision is needed that reflects the views of a whole community.  It aims to let everyone contribute their ideas, and helps find the consensus about what should be done. Already tried with everyone from Football League clubs, to an arts festival, to a national charity, Crowd Wise strives to enable all sorts of people make decisions which are fair, sensible and have the broadest possible support.

Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing is a practice whereby an individual, group or company obtains the services or ideas it needs by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, usually an online community. It is often associated with the ethical practice of giving back the crowdsourced results to the public, and can be a method for triggering public participation in a wide variety of arenas ranging from citizen science to funding development projects.

Debiasing

Most field visits are planned, accompanied by government or NGO staff and subject to well-known biases. Debiasing visits involve travelling in unbranded vehicles without an official escort – though translators are likely to be needed.

Communities can be selected randomly and not told in advance. Once there, visitors wander around, observe, ask questions and listen non-judgementally. It is important that those undertaking this do not go to lecture or promote their particular programme but use the time to listen and learn.

There are potential safety concerns with this approach that will need to be taken into consideration, with an assessment of the context/area undertaken in advance, and researchers or practitioners ensuring they do not put themselves, or others, at risk. Read Robert Chambers’ blog for further instructions on how to conduct a debiasing visit. 

Energizer

Energizers are activities used in workshops and group situations to help participants be more alert and active; they can also be an important way of people getting to know and understand one another. There are many different energizers of varying length, complexity, exertion and ingenuity. They need to be enjoyable and feel safe, so should always be used in a way that is sensitive to factors such as culture, gender, physical ability and group dynamics. They can be particularly useful at the start of the day, when people are still getting to know one another, and after lunch, when sleepiness can set in.

Facipulate

This word, a combination of facilitate and manipulate, means to facilitate in a manipulative manner. It highlights the power of facilitators to potentially dominate participatory processes by setting agendas, steering discussions, framing analysis and summarising conclusions.

Feminist Pedagogy

Feminist pedagogy is a set of principles and practices of teaching and education which is grounded in feminist theory. This means that teaching strategies, approaches to content, classroom practices, and teacher-student relationships are all grounded in the assumption that the widespread social subordination of women is not acceptable, and that girls and women have equal rights, particularly to education.

Feminist Standpoint Theory

Feminist standpoint theory argues that all knowledge is socially constructed. It suggests that we need to identify the social dynamics which contribute to the subordination of girls and women, and that we have to see things from their standpoint in order to fully value their knowledge.

Focus Group Discussion

Focus group discussions (FGDs) are part of most experiences of participatory research and action, and perhaps the most commonly used method in the participatory toolkit. The label FGD embraces a range of different procedures, but the common denominator is that a group of different types of participants is formed, and the group members are given the opportunity to enter into conversation with each other in a safe setting. In participatory research, a FGD is usually convened, mediated and recorded by a team of at least two people, including a facilitator and a note-taker.

Immersion

Immersions are a form of learning undertaken by aid organisations. They involve development professionals living with a host family in a poor community for a short period, helping with daily tasks and sharing in family life. The visitors gain a very real experience of the cultures and conditions of the people on whose behalf they are working. Immersions, which have become more widespread in the past 15 years, can have profound effects on how development professionals understand and carry out their work, as described by Robert Chambers in an Oxfam blog. The Reality Check Approach (RCA) website has a great deal of useful material about immersions and the reality check approach, and includes an introductory video by Dee Jupp.

Linkage Diagram

There are many forms of linkage diagram, including flow charts, Venn diagrams, problem trees and mind maps. What they all have in common is that they allow participants – individually or collectively – to make a visual representation of the relationships between different components of the subject being discussed. The participatory process of creating and discussing the diagrams leads to collective analysis.

Mapping and Modelling

Many PMs involve local people analysing their situation using pictures, diagrams and symbols rather than just words. Mapping and modelling are common tools and take many forms including social, resource, mobility, environmental and vulnerability maps. Maps and models can be large or small, simple or intricate, two or three dimensional, and can be created using paper and pens, sand, earth, sticks, stones, leaves and a variety of other materials. They can be a very powerful form of expression, especially for non-literate people, and can reveal a great deal about peoples’ lives and how they see the world around them.

Matrix Scoring

Matrix scoring is a visual method of analysis in which items are compared according to a number of criteria. The items are usually listed across the top of a matrix or grid and the criteria down the side. The resulting boxes are then scored, each item according to each criterion, often using beans, stones or other counters.

Most Significant Change

The purpose of this method, most often used in monitoring and evaluation, is to identify cases of significant changes – either positive or negative – relating to the key objectives of the intervention. It is particularly useful for tracking stories of change that are related to issues that are not easily quantifiable, such as ‘capacity strengthening’ or ‘gender equity’.

NGO

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are usually non-profit, non-sectarian organisations which are not linked to any form of government. They are usually task-orientated and have a broad range of social, environmental, justice or development objectives. Two variations are international NGOs (INGOs) and big international NGO (BINGOs).

Outcome Mapping

Outcome mapping is a methodology for planning, monitoring and evaluating development initiatives that aim to bring about social change. It can help a project team or programme to be clear about the actors it targets, the changes it expects to see and the strategies it employs. Results are measured in terms of changes in behaviour, actions or relationships.

Participant Observation

Participant observation was a research method first used by anthropologists and ethnographers, and relied on researchers both observing and participating in the social life of the group of people they were learning about. These basic principles were reflected in the earliest versions of Participatory Rural Appraisal, when staying in communities and working alongside community members was seen as part of the reversal of normal development practice that was needed in order to ensure the participation of ordinary people.

Participatory Action Research

Participatory Action Research (PAR) is an approach to enquiry which has been used since the 1940s. It involves researchers and participants working together to understand a problematic situation and change it for the better. There are many definitions of the approach, which share some common elements. PAR focuses on social change that promotes democracy and challenges inequality; is context-specific, often targeted on the needs of a particular group; is an iterative cycle of research, action and reflection; and often seeks to ‘liberate’ participants to have a greater awareness of their situation in order to take action. PAR uses a range of different methods, both qualitative and quantitative.

Participatory Audits

Many governments have an official agency that audits their departments and programmes, often called a supreme audit institution. In several countries in recent years, these institutions have included alliances of civil society organisations in participatory audits with the aim of promoting transparency in their own work.

Participatory Budgeting

Participatory budgeting, pioneered in Porto Alegre, Brazil in 1989, directly involves citizens in making decisions on spending and priorities for a defined public budget. It allows them to identify and discuss public spending projects, and gives them the power to make real decisions about how money is used.

Participatory Geographical Information Systems (PGIS)

Participatory Geographical Information Systems (PGIS) integrate a range of geographic information technologies (GIT) into community-centred initiatives with the aim of creating community-led spatial information gathering and decision making.  Because GITs have often relied on expensive technology, they had a tendency to be exclusive: this differential access has favoured those with the power to use them often to the disadvantage of local people and communities.  PGIS attempts to reverse this and includes a range of 3-D mapping and modelling methodologies that make the most of geographical information technology, are more complex than traditional PRA maps and are accessible to local communities.

Participatory Learning and Action (PLA)

Participatory Learning and Action is a family of approaches, methods, attitudes, behaviours and relationships, which enable and empower people to share, analyse and enhance their knowledge of their life and conditions, and to plan, act, monitor, evaluate and reflect.

Participatory Poverty Assessments (PPAs)

Participatory Poverty Assessments (PPAs) were large-scale research initiatives which used PMs to gather the views of citizens about poverty in order to influence the public policy of developing country governments. Popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s, PPAs were mainly carried out as policy research exercises and aimed to bring an understanding of the perspectives and priorities of poor people to poverty reduction agendas.

Participatory Video

Participatory video involves a group or community creating its own film. The film-making process can enable participants to take action to solve their own problems, or to communicate their needs and ideas to decision-makers. Participatory video can also be an effective tool to engage and mobilise marginalised people.

PhotoVoice

Giving cameras to people provides a participatory technique for them to take photographs to illustrate their lives and to share their knowledge and expertise of their issues. PhotoVoice allows people to present their voice. Individuals can express their own perspectives on life and enable others to understand their issues.

Photographs produced from PhotoVoice are used to elicit reflection and information on participants’ life experiences through interviews and group discussions, trigger debate, raise awareness and instigate social change. The photos are often presented to the wider community and policymakers through exhibitions, publications or public events.

PhotoVoice has been used across many sectors, including WASH, construction, sexual and reproductive health and climate change.

Planning for Real®

Planning for Real® (PFR) emerged in the UK in the 1970s, and is now is a trademarked community planning process based on a three dimensional model. PFR allows residents to register their views on a range of issues, to work together to identify priorities, and – in partnership with local agencies – to develop an action plan for change.

Popular Education

Popular education is a tradition that arose in Latin America in the first half of the twentieth century, although its ideological roots stretch back much further. It is based on the understanding that, in a context of social injustice, education can never be politically neutral. If it does not explicitly attempt to transform society in favour of the oppressed, then it is complicit in maintaining the existing structures of injustice.

Popular Theatre

Popular Theatre describes theatre which speaks to ordinary people in their own language or idiom, and deals with issues that are relevant to them. It also concentrates on awakening the capacity of those involved to participate, to make their own decisions and to organize themselves for common action.

PRA South-South Exchanges

During the mid-1990s, when early innovations in Participatory Rural Appraisal were at their height, the Institute of Development Studies in the UK played a key role supporting the growth of practitioner networks. Central to this role was the organisation of ‘South-South’ exchanges, where practitioners from different parts of the global South met in each others’ countries to share experiences and learn from each other and from community members. Village immersions were a key element of these exchanges.

Public Expenditure Tracking Survey

Public Expenditure Tracking Surveys (PETS) are surveys that measure the amount of funds received at each point in the chain of public service delivery, from a nation’s treasury to the classroom or health clinic where the funds are intended to be spent. Citizens are involved in monitoring a sample of schools or clinics. PETS findings can provide evidence of corruption and be used for advocacy and campaigning.

Rapid Action Learning

Rapid Action Learning (RAL) methodologies are action-orientated and participatory, but their defining feature is that they are short, intense, largely one-off research projects that are carried out often at a critical point in time. The Sanitation Learning Hub have used these approaches to rapidly gather evidence, often on an urgent overlooked issue, to provide an initial exploration and recommend actions for first steps. Key RAL research methods include debiasing, rapid topic explorations and hunter-gathering.

Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA)

Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA) emerged in the late 1970s in response to some of the problems with large-scale, structured questionnaire surveys. It provided an alternative technique for outsiders – often scientists carrying out research into agriculture – to quickly learn from local people about their realities and challenges. RRA practitioners worked in multi-disciplinary teams and pioneered the use a suite of visual methods and semi-structured interviews to learn from respondents. While it was largely about data collection, usually analysed by outsiders, RRA contained the seeds from which other PMs grew in the 1980s. Reflections on RRA led to the development of Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), which focused more strongly on facilitation, empowerment, behaviour change, local knowledge and sustainable action.

Reality Check Approach (RCA)

The RCA is a qualitative research approach that has become highly significant in recent years.  It seeks to improve the understanding and connection between pro-poor development professionals and the people that they aim to serve.  It offers governments, donors, development programmes and others an opportunity to live for a period of time with poor and marginalised people, to take part in their daily lives and engage in informal conversations and interactions. The emphasis is on minimal disruption to those lives, the building of trust and openness, and a shift in power dynamics.  A powerful research tool, it gives those who spend much of their lives in offices the chance for a more genuine understanding of the realities of others. These rich experiences of other people’s lives and what matters to them can then be used to better inform policy and influence decisions. A great deal more information is available on the RCA website.

Reflect

Reflect is an approach to facilitated group learning and action developed by ActionAid to support adult literacy. Groups of adult learners, are convened to learn literacy, develop maps, calendars and matrices analysing different aspects of their own lives. These become the basis for a process of learning new words, gaining awareness of what causes underlying problems, and identifying action points and taking them forward.

Reflective Practice

Reflective practice describes the activity of self-aware reflection and action which is often integral to the effective use of PMs. More than simply looking back at an activity we were involved in, a reflective approach to practice will also involve us in seeking to understand how our own perceptions, assumptions, beliefs and values have influenced that activity. This in turn leads to defining and carrying out further actions which help us question our own realities and appreciate that our relationships shape our sense of self and understanding of the world.

Sector-specific Budget Monitoring

Closely related to participatory budgets, sector-specific budget monitoring is a tool used to check that a government’s policy commitments in a particular sector match its expenditure. Most commonly used to track expenditure on gender, they have also been used to examine spending on children.

Semi-structured Interview

A semi-structured interview is a research method widely used in the social sciences, which forms the basis of many kinds of participatory research. Unlike a structured interview or questionnaire survey, a semi-structured interview is open, allowing new ideas to be brought up during the interview as a result of what the interviewee says. The interviewer starts out with a basic  framework of themes to be explored, rather than a precise and fixed list of questions.

Social Audits

Social audits were originally developed in the private sector as a way of evaluating the social and environmental impacts of a company’s activities. They have been adopted by civil society organisations as a way of assessing government performance on meeting its social, environmental and community goals, and finding ways it can be improved. Successful social audits rest on the participation of diverse stakeholders.

Social Constructivism

Social constructivist theory asserts that the world is socially constructed and that ‘reality’ is always perceived through a ‘social’ lens. An example of this is gender. Understandings of masculinity and femininity vary between societies, and there is no single, ‘true’ meaning of the terms.

Stepping Stones

Stepping Stones is a training and facilitation approach for raising awareness and action in relation to gender, sexual health and rights, and HIV/AIDS, and for developing communication and relationship skills using a wide range of participatory tools and methods.

Time Line

Making a timeline involves listing events in sequence, often with approximate dates, reflecting the shared history of a group or community. It may include trends over time as well as events. It helps groups understand their history and give context to their current situation, and to build rapport and learn from each other.

Triggering

The phrase ‘triggering’ comes from experience with Community-led Total Sanitation (CLTS). Triggering is the name given to the process of facilitating participatory exercises for collective analysis of open defecation by community members which results in their decision to stop the practice.

Venn Diagram

A Venn diagram is a tool commonly used in participatory rural appraisal (PRA) in which objects of different sizes, shapes or colours are arranged to show the relative importance and relationships of individuals, institutions and organisations. Circular pieces of paper or stones are often used. The name of this method varies around the world, Venn being replaced by chapatti in South Asia, tortilla in Latin America and dumpling in the Caribbean.

Web 2.0 Tools

Web 2.0 tools allow Internet users to interact and collaborate with each other in creating content, rather than simply passively viewing website pages. Many of these tools – social networking sites, blogs, wikis, mashups and video sharing sites – are commonly used by practitioners of participatory communications as a way of including diverse voices.

Well-being or Wealth Ranking

The purpose of this method is to include members of a community firstly in developing a set of local indicators for well-being or wealth, and then in ranking households according to those indicators. This leads to a relative ranking of socio-economic conditions in a community, which can be helpful either in targeting an intervention towards those who are less well off, or in understanding what kinds of household have access to services or other resources.