Beyond appraisal: Participatory appraisal of needs and the development of action

It is often useful to have a framework for guiding decisions about process when carrying out or facilitating some intervention. This paper describes such a framework, developed out of combining participatory rural appraisal (PRA) with various OR/systems methods, that we have used in work in both developing and developed countries to enable local people to obtain, share and analyse knowledge of their life and conditions and to plan and act according to that knowledge. The paper begins by examining the framework provided by PRA, indicating why we felt it necessary to develop something slightly different. This paper will then outline the approach which we refer to as PANDA (Participatory Appraisal of Needs and the Development of Action). Applications are illustrated by means of a case-study taken from a developing country context.