Participatory Research and Gender Analysis

New Approaches

Nina Lilja, John Dixon, Deborah Eade

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781317986843
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: Biological Sciences

Agricultural development research aims to generate new knowledge or to retrieve and apply existing forms of knowledge in ways that can be used to improve the welfare of people who are living in poverty or are otherwise excluded, for instance by gender-based discrimination. Its effective application therefore requires ongoing dialogue with and the strong engagement of men and women from poor marginal farming communities.

This book discusses opportunities afforded by effective knowledge pathways linking researchers and farmers, underpinned by participatory research and gender analysis. It sets out practices and debates in gender-sensitive participatory research and technology development, concentrating on the empirical issues of implementation, impact assessment, and institutionalisation of approaches for the wider development and research community. It includes six full-length chapters and eight brief practical notes and is enhanced by an annotated resources list of relevant publications, organisations, and websites adding to the portfolio of approaches and tools discussed by the contributors. Most of the 33 contributing authors work in the specialised agencies that form part of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).

This book was published as a special issue of Development in Practice.

Some common questions about participatory research: a review of the literature

Nina Lilja and Mauricio Bellon

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This article reviews, through reference to the published literature, some key questions about participatory research. When should participatory research be used? How should participatory research be applied? What about quality of science in participatory research? Are there any institutional issues associated with the use of participatory research? And what are the benefits and costs of participatory research? The article is not a comprehensive literature review on participatory research, it is not meant to set standards for participatory research, nor to define what constitutes ‘good’ participatory research, but rather it seeks to summarise the realities of implementing participatory research, as discussed and debated by several published authors, and to provide some useful background for this special issue.

This article¹ reviews some overarching questions concerning participatory research that should ideally be answered before embarking upon a new research project (even better, before or during the planning of the project). These basic questions are addressed by reference to the literature. An earlier version of this article was used to identify key elements to be considered in a review of the status of participatory research at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) (Lilja and Bellon 2006), and was used to develop the survey questions for researchers. It is not, therefore, a complete review of the rationale for participatory research or its impacts.

The objective of participatory research

Conventional research tends to package intervention methods and programmes into one-size-fits-all, off-the-shelf approaches, based on a notion of universal best practices. Participatory methods address the drawbacks inherent in that approach by actively involving end-users in the research process, incorporating their views and representation into the prioritisation, review, conduct, and dissemination of scientific research. This fosters trust in agricultural research, increases research participation, addresses issues of greatest importance to the communities, and aids the translation of research results into useful practice.

Participatory research gives rural people within a study population opportunities to determine what is being studied, and teaches them the basics of research methodology so that they can assume collaborative roles. Furthermore, many if not most rural people in developing countries operate in imperfect markets, where prices do not completely reflect the value that these people attach to the activities that they engage in or goods that they consume or produce; therefore, simple profitability analyses — which may work well under the conditions of good market development that are common in developed countries — may be a poor guide to decision making about new activities, technologies, and products intended to improve the livelihoods of people in developing countries. Participatory research can provide a more accurate assessment of what people value that is not completely captured by market prices; this information in turn, if fed back into the design and development of new technologies, should help to make such new technologies more relevant and appropriate, so that they generate more benefits for these people. In practice, participatory approaches engage people in a community in some or all aspects of the research process — determining research questions, developing technical solutions and approaches to obtain information, and deciding what the research means and how it should be used to benefit the community.

There are two types of literature, one about types of participatory research (see, for example, Biggs 1989; Biggs and Farrington 1991; Pretty 1994), and other studies which focus on describing participatory tools and how to use them (for example, Farrington 1988; Chambers et al. 1989; Okali et al. 1994; Chambers 1997; Campbell 2001). However, there are no specific standards set for participatory research to guide research managers in monitoring what constitutes ‘good’ participatory research, or to help them to decide when participatory approaches would be more effective than conventional research methods, and hence to decide when their impact, via the products of the agricultural research process, on the lives of the intended beneficiaries (mostly farmers) would be more effective than that of conventional research methods.

When should participatory research be used?

Studies claim that participatory approaches are crucial in programmes that require holistic approaches (rather than changing one technology at a time), and where environmental and socio-economic conditions vary widely among farmers and sites (Roling and Wagemakers 1998). However, very few published studies provide definite decision rules based on empirical evidence for research management about when participatory approaches are most beneficial to technology development, compared with traditional centralised approaches (typically based on on-station technology development and on-farm testing). Some studies show that the traditional scientist-designed and -directed agricultural research programmes are very effective at developing varieties and technologies that can be used in farming systems that are fairly homogeneous, but often less effective when the reality of the farmer is more complex and risk-prone (Byerlee and Heisey 1996; Ohemke and Crawford 1996; Maredia et al. 1998; Evenson and Gollin 2002; Dalton and Guei 2003).

In reality, participatory approaches are often tried and used after the failure of conventional approaches to developing and delivering improved crop types and natural-resource management (NRM) techniques to resource-poor farmers. There are various reasons for the low uptake of agricultural technologies produced by formal research systems. Nowak (1992) defines two types of barrier to adoption: the inability to adopt, and the unwillingness to adopt. Inability to adopt includes situations where information about the technology is lacking; the cost of obtaining the information about it is too high; the technology is too complex or too expensive; the technology has excessive labour requirements; benefits are too far in the future; farmers have limited access to resources that might support them; managerial skills are inadequate; and farmers have no control over the adoption decision. The farmers’ apparent unwillingness to adopt can be due to the fact that conflicting or inconsistent information is provided about the new technology; the information about the technology is difficult to apply in a farmer’s particular circumstances or is irrelevant to those circumstances; there is a conflict between the current production goal and the new technology; the technology is inappropriate for the individual’s physical setting; or there is an increased risk of negative outcomes. Ignorance on the part of the farmer or technology promoter, and belief in traditional practices, can also result in farmers’ unwillingness to adopt new technology.

There are several studies that provide some insight into the question of when it is best to use participatory research approaches. Weltzein et al. (2000) use a matrix of two parameters (biophysical and economic environment) to map 65 participatory plant-breeding projects. Their biophysical environment scale ranges from high to low stress, based on actual versus expected yields, coupled with an index for incidence of crop failure. Their economic environment parameter ranges from high degree of homogeneous demand to heterogeneous demand (for instance, high-input commercial crops to low-input subsistence crops). The projects in the sample were widely dispersed within the matrix. Although many plant breeders consider participatory approaches most appropriate for environments that are high-stress and where few inputs are used (subsistence agriculture), a large number of sampled projects were located in the intermediate areas where agro-climatic stress was less severe.

Johnson et al. (2004) surveyed 59 participatory NRM projects, among which the most common resource across all projects was soils — nearly half of the projects worked on soil-related topics. Water was the second most common resource, followed by forests and biodiversity. The priority given to different resources varied across geographical regions. Institutional innovations were the most common technology on which projects reported working, followed by agronomic practices in Africa, and agro-forestry in Asia and Latin America. Half of the projects in the study reported working on more than one resource or technology. The average project in ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Development in Practice Books
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Previously published Development in Practice Readers
• Contributors
• Chapter summaries
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. Some common questions about participatory research: a review of the literature
• 2. The lost 1990s? Personal reflections on a history of participatory technology development
• 3. Impact assessment of farmer institutional development and agricultural change: Soroti district, Uganda
• 4. No more adoption rates! Looking for empowerment in agricultural development programmes
• 5. Appraisal of methods to evaluate farmer field schools
• 6. Engaging with cultural practices in ways that benefit women in northern Nigeria
• 7. Strategies for out-scaling participatory research approaches for sustaining agricultural research impacts
• 8. Integrating participatory elements into conventional research projects: measuring the costs and benefits
• 9. Participatory research practice at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT)
• 10. Making poverty mapping and monitoring participatory
• 11. Participatory risk assessment a new approach for safer food in vulnerable African communities
• 12. Pro-poor values in agricultural research management: PETRRA experiences in practice
• 13. Operationalising participatory research and farmer-to-farmer extension: the Kamayoq in Peru
• 14. Using community indicators for evaluating research and development programmes: experiences from Malawi
• 15. Participatory technology development in agricultural mechanisation in Nepal: how it happened and lessons learned
• 16. Gender equity and social capital in smallholder farmer groups in central Mozambique
• 17. Further resources for participatory research and gender analysis
• Index