Which statement best describes Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA)?

• A. PRA relies on external researchers to collect all data with little community involvement.
• B. PRA is a set of participatory and largely visual techniques for assessing community resources, identifying problems, and appraising strategies for solving them.
• C. PRA emphasizes long, written reports over open group discussion.
• D. PRA excludes the use of pictures and symbols in data collection.

Answer: (B)

Participatory Rural Appraisal centers on engaging the community through participatory and largely visual methods to map resources, surface problems, and evaluate potential solutions with local knowledge. The emphasis is on active involvement by community members, using quick, low-cost data collection and shared interpretation so findings reflect local priorities. PRA relies on tools like maps, diagrams, seasonal calendars, ranking and scoring, and open group discussions, often using pictures and symbols to include diverse voices. This makes it different from approaches where external researchers collect most data with little community input, or where long written reports and formal debates replace interactive, visual methods. It also clearly opposes excluding pictures and symbols.