Asia-Pacific Fishery Commission

This manual is a compilation of a variety of PRA tools and techniques. Deciding what tool or technique to use, depends a lot on the type of information you need.

Townsley, P. Rapid rural appraisal, participatory rural appraisal and aquaculture. FAO Fisheries Technical Paper. No. 358. Rome, FAO. 1996. 109p.

This document is intended for aquaculture development specialists, aquaculture project managers, and officials and specialists involved in the planning and management of aquaculture activities. It is intended to provide an introduction to Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA) and Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) for people working in these fields. The principal components of these two approaches to information collection and planning are described along with the various tools used with a case study to illustrate their use and some of the issues they raise. Possible applications of the approaches for those involved in aquaculture development are given and an outline provided of the sorts of planning and institutional context where they can best be applied. The problems and shortcomings of the approaches are also discussed and guidelines given for the use of alternative approaches to information gathering and planning.

Maine, R.A.; Cam, B.; Davis-Case, D. Participatory analysis, monitoring and evaluation for fishing communities: a manual.
FAO Fisheries Technical Paper. No. 364. Rome, FAO. 1996. 142p.

While there are many manuals available on participatory rapid appraisal approaches to monitoring and evaluation, there were none easily used by field officers attempting to aid and encourage fishing community level participation in monitoring and evaluating activities of projects and programmes in rural fishing communities.

This manual is prepared in cook book fashion with easily followed instructions for 26 participatory monitoring tools to allow use by both local field staff acting as facilitators and directly by community members engaged in the evaluation process.