Assessing the impact of participatory research and gender analysis

Public-sector and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are increasingly using participatory methods to widen the adoption and impact of a range of technology innovations in agriculture and Natural Resource Management (NRM). Examples of these technology innovations are: new crop varieties, improved crop husbandry, or changes in the management of soil, water, or forest resources. The growing scarcity of resources for research outside the private sector places increasing demands on researchers to provide evidence that the costs of participatory methods are justified by the results. Carefully conducted impact studies are needed to provide convincing evidence that client participation has been a good investment in the past and will continue to be so in the future. An objective of using gender/stakeholder analysis is to assess how best to involve all stakeholders in the innovation process. Gender and stakeholder analysis does not always directly provide answers to agricultural production or NRM problems. But, it does provide means of raising questions about links between and among different stakeholders and agricultural production or NRM. Similarly, a sound assessment of the impacts of gender/stakeholder analysis provides convincing evidence on how effectively it meets the overall goals of the development efforts.