Rapid Assessment Procedures /Rapid Assessment

Methodologies(RAP)

Chona Rita R. Cruz (CINDY) 86-16518PhD Media Studies

Report for COM 307Dr. Lourdes Portus

• Effective, cost-efficient, creative and participatory methods of gathering reliable data over shorter periods of time generated, conceptualized, and developed in the 1980s

• RAP does not by any means replace traditional anthropology, but must be seen as an additional method (34)

• RAPs are not and cannot be a universal cure for all the gaps of social information (12)

• They strive to be rapid, practical for problem solving, and to provide accurate data through the use of multiple information sources (35)

History

• Rapid Assessment Procedures (RAP) and Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA) developed and began to mature in the 1980s (4)

• During that time, RAP was most often used in programmes for child survival and development (Africa) (4)

• Many programme managers saw the needs to measure the impact of health and nutrition interventions on behaviors and also to learn more clearly why various strategies succeeded or failed (4)

• Quantitative surveys and the usual methodology to evaluate interventions were costly, time-consuming, invasive, difficult to negotiate and manage

• In-depth knowledge of the community was needed to adapt and develop a strategy which would effectively deliver a service or achieve a desired behavior change among the project’s clients

• Need for in-depth, unbiased information on communities served

• In response, a small group of anthropologists began adapting anthropological investigation methods into procedures and tools that could be applied in a relatively rapid manner.

• Rapid – no fixed definition, dependent on needs of research, but the target was to be shorter than the usual minimum of one year; ideally six months

• Based on direct observation, unstructured interviews, and focus group discussions, they aimed toward gathering in-depth community level information on health and nutrition related behavior at the household level

• Initial goal: explanatory information on the success or failure of health and nutrition interventions

• First name: “Field Guide for the Study of Health Seeking Behaviour at the Household Level” (1984)

• “Rapid Assessment Procedures: Anthropological Approaches to the Evaluation and Improvement of Programmes of Nutrition and Primary Health Care” (1984) – RAP

• Another group in rural India in trhe 1980s began developing and testing highly participative methods by which community members could express complex information about their homes, environment, work and lives – “Rapid Rural Appraisal” (RRA) or “Participatory Rural Appraisal” (PRA)

• By the end of 1980s: RAP had been cited as a principle methodology in over 100 studies and investigations

Merits of Changes Brought by RAP

• The potential for changing and improving the planning of development: by cost-effectively providing knowledge about the actors of development themselves, RAPs can increase planners’ ability to PUT PEOPLE FIRST in development projects

• RAP work has launched some social sciences on a path of methodological re-tooling: a process that does not reject or abandon traditional methods and techniques but complements and enriches them.

• RAP represents a new generation of flexible knowledge-producing instruments which increase the capacity of social sciences for applied

• A broad arsenal of new techniques for data generation on the life, behavior and production patterns of individuals, households and communities have been invented, tested, refined and disseminated – enriching social science research

• Conceptual load carried by new techniques into project practice – a considerable body of notions, propositions, explanations, knowledge from general sociology, medical and general anthropology, political science, and other social science descriptions, knowledge in which such rapid techniques are embedded, are introduced into development work. Such substantive understandings improve work for inducing development.

• “the quantified bones of the survey with the qualitative flesh of the quick assessment studies” (15) – shows how a wise combination of rapid and not-so-rapid but statistically-based studies led to significant improvements in the public-health network: cooperation between indigenous and biomedically trained health practitioners in disease control campaigns against cholera and diarrheal diseases. (16)

Risks

• How rapid isn’t too rapid?• Investigator’s judgment call as to what he can

ignore and how much imprecision he can appropriately tolerate

• RAPID, CREATIVE and FLEXIBLE as excuses for an “anything goes” approach

• RAP’s informal nature mistaken for an unbounded permission to “play it by ear”

• The need for professional training for the practitioners of RAPs

Principles for dealing with issues of accuracy, representativeness, cultural inappropriateness, and subjectivity:

• Optimal ignorance (not trying to find out more than is needed)

• Appropriate imprecision (not trying to measure what does not need to be measured, or not measuring more accurately than is necessary for practical purposes)

Problems and Limitations that led to the development of RAP

• The exclusion of cultural and historical aspects from projection of African reality (health research) (81)

• Inadequate, limited, and irrelevant research findings misguided policy formation (81)

• Scientific inquiry was dominated by the researcher and excluded the subjects study (81)

• Policy formulation usurped by the elite• Top-down approach was widespread (81)

Context of Emergence of RAP in the African Continent

• Participatory development – a process through which the currently marginalized poor become aware of the wide range of value choices open to them, and their social and political implications

• Shift from “top down” service delivery model to “bottom up” response demanding model

• Action-research – people oriented strategy for creating change; a flexible, problem-solving approach in which planning, implementation, and evaluation belong to one single process during which emerging problems aer solved and alternative strategies adopted in the process of creating change; involves a collaborative arrangement between change agents, programmers, and beneficiaries of the change process

Main Features of RAP

• Methodologies that provide health workers, social scientists in fields other than anthropology and anthropologists guidelines for conducting rapid assessments of health-seeking behavior – behavior involved in maintaining health and overcoming illness, including the use of both traditional and modern health services (83)

• Holistic methodology designed to organize macro and micro level data into one (83)

• Involves synthesizing data on health structures, health beliefs and perceptions for the explanation of health seeking behavior (83)

• Impact of a health programme can be best understood through inter-subjective data and individual cognitive representations – best obtained through RAP (83)

A tool for formative research

• Information on type of music preferred• Perception of campaign artists• Reactions to various messages on family planning• Three states on the knowledge of family planning• Perceptions of existing services and methods of

family planning• Media habits• Determining health priorities• Identifying local concepts, cultural definitions of

disease and illness (85)

Procedures of RAP

• Qualitative data on individual perceptions, beliefs, values, and definitions of the situation are central to RAP (83)

• These are obtained through the following procedures: (83)– Formal interviews– Informal interviews– Conversations with well-informed individuals or

groups– Observations– Participant observations– Focus Group Discussions (FGD)

Rapid Rural Appraisal

Principles

• Learning rapidly and progressively, with flexible use of methods, opportunism, improvisation, and iteration, not following a blueprinted programme but adapting in a learning process (296)

• Offsetting the biases (spatial, project, person, seasonal, professional, diplomatic...) of rural development tourism, and not rushing but relaxing (296)

• Learning from and with rural people, directly face-to-face (296)

• Triangulating, meaning using more than one, and often three, methods or sources to cross check (296)

• Optimizing, relating costs of learning to the useful truth of information, with trade-offs between quantity, relevance, accuracy, and timeliness (296) :– Optimal ignorance (not trying to find out more than is

needed) – appropriate imprecision (not trying to measure what

does not need to be measured, or not measuring more accurately than is necessary for practical purposes)

• Critical self-awareness, reflecting on what is being seen and not seen, who is being met and not met, what is being said and not said, and sources of error (296)

Menu of RRA Methods

• Secondary data review (“second-hand” analysis – analysis of data or information gathered by someone else or for some other purpose than the one currently being considered, or a combination of the two)

• Direct observation, including wandering around• DIY (doing-it-yourself), taking part in activities• Key informants• Semi-structured interviews• Group interviews• Chains (sequences) of interviews• Key indicators• Key probes• Workshops and brainstorming

• Transects and group walks• Mapping• Aerial photographs• Diagrams• Ranking and scoring• Quick quantification• Ethnohistories and time lines (chronologies of events) • Stories, portraits and case studies• Team management and interactions• Short, simple questionnaires• Rapid report writing in the field

Participatory Rural Appraisal and

Participatory Learning Methods(PALM)

• Highly participative data gathering to better understand realities of community life and the dynamism and complexity of rural villagers’ concept of their life (307)

• Tools for gathering were evolved and continue to evolve from previous sets of tools for development planning (307)

• Data gathered concentrated on villagers’ expression of the state of their social and physical surroundings, status, history, and plans (307)

• Emphasis on the participation of village people in their own development (308)

• Active and ongoing presence not as a "patron” and “benefactor” but as “catalyst” and “partner” in development (308)

• Constant and extensive use of PALM in a variety of situations has helped bring about progress in PALM methodology:

• New applications: the use of existing methods in new ways to gather information

• New extensions: evolving methods to extend the reach of information they already currently gather

• New methods: emergence / conception of new and creative ways of gathering information

• Hybrids: evolving new methods by combining two or more methods

Some Methods and Applications

Timeline

• Time and events, history, evolution of a village, agricultural practices, health care practices

• Focus on the construction of a chronology of events that have taken place in consultation with the people

• Whose history? The people’s history

Social Mapping

• Village layout, infrastructure, population, chronic health cases, handicapped, malnourished children, family planning cases, vaccinations, widows, destitutes, etc.

• Participatory construction of their own social landscape

Primary Resource Mapping and Modelling

• Land, water and tree resources, land use, land and soil types, cropping patterns, land and water management, productivity, watersheds, degraded land, treatment plans, etc.

• Done by the villagers themselves with paper and pens for mapping on paper OR chalk and colored powders for mapping on the ground

Historical Transect

• Pictorial/graphic representations of the area at different points in time, to give evolutionary trends in land use, vegetation, erosion, population, etc.

• Done by interviewing older people and asking them to recap the landscape of a given area at different points in time

Ranking

• For ranking items such as: crops, varieties, types and breeds of livestock, trees, fodders, supplementary income generating activities

• Done by asking farmers to list different items e.g. Species of trees or vegetables and different criteria for evaluating them. Each class or category is then given a rank or score by the villagers. This is done by means of quantification with pebbles or seeds.

Venn Diagram

• Used as a means of identifying and establishing relationships between a village and its environment in order of their relative importance

Personal Experiences with RAP

Community Circle

• Grassroots community members• Power relations• Closeness to or distance from decision-makers

/ gatekeepers• Inclusion and involvement • Context-rich

Life Stories Poster / Comics

• Former teenage mothers, now parents of school-age children

• Patterns in education, dropout age, reasons for leaving school, work history, coming of children and age/s of pregnancy etc.

• Context-rich

Community Walking and Mapping

• Flower farm community in the Cordilleras• General layout of the village• General family census (basic information)• Location of flower farms, vegetable farms• Houses and types (presentation of wealth)• Centers of community activity – barangay hall,

canteens, stores

Walking Around

• Baguio – following a media artifact• Shopperslane, Centermall, Dangwa Station,

stores along Magsaysay, and other places occupied by “natives”

Case Study Using RAP in the Philippines

REACH Initiative

• REACH is a joint initiative of two international non-governmental organisations, ACTED and IMPACT Initiatives, and the United Nations Operational Satellite Applications Programme (UNOSAT). REACH was created in 2010 to facilitate the development of information tools and products that enhance the capacity of aid actors to make evidence-based decisions in emergency, recovery and development contexts.

Typhoon Haiyan Assessment of Affected Areas

• Through its standby partnership with the Global Shelter Cluster, REACH has already carried out several rapid field deployments in the Philippines since 2011, following these emergencies: typhoon Washi, typhoon Bopha, Bohol earthquake, and the typhoon Haiyan.

• In relation to typhoon Haiyan REACH first undertook rapid needs assessment in November 2013. For this purpose, the Global Shelter Cluster and REACH agreed to support the Global WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) cluster in order to facilitate a joint shelter-WASH needs assessment.

• This joint assessment complemented the Multi-sector Initial Rapid Assessment (MIRA) with the view to inform the Strategic Response Plan.

• As a follow-up, REACH carried out in March 2014 a second shelter cluster assessment to monitor the shelter sector response in Haiyan affected areas.

Text quoted from http://www.reach-initiative.org/typhoon-haiyan-shelter-and-wash-response-monitoring-assessment

The Report: Shelter and Wash Rapid Assessment :

Typhoon Haiyan, Philippines 2013 – Final Report 15 January 2014

http://www.reach-initiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Haiyan-Typhoon-Shelter-WASH_assessment_Final-Report_validated-formatted.pdf

Bibliography

Scrimshaw, N.S. & Gleason, G.R. (1992) RAP – Rapid Assessment Procedures: Qualitative Methodologies for Planning and Evaluation of Health Related Programmes. Boston, MA: International Nutrition Foundation for Developing Countries. (INFDC)

REACH: Informing more effective humanitarian interaction. Retrieved from http://www.reach-initiative.org/

REACH Shelter and Wash Response Monitoring Assessment in Typhoon Haiyan Affected Areas. REACH Initiative. Retrieved from http://www.reach-initiative.org/typhoon-haiyan-shelter-and-wash-response-monitoring-assessment

Shelter and Wash Rapid Assessment : Typhoon Haiyan, Philippines 2013 – Final Report 15 January 2014. Retrieved from REACH Initiative http://www.reach-initiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Haiyan-Typhoon-Shelter-WASH_assessment_Final-Report_validated-formatted.pdf