Vernooy, Ronnie and McDougall, Cynthia. “Principles for Good Practice in Participatory Research: Reflecting on Lessons from the Field.” The International Development Research Centre. http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-43440-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html (accessed April 15, 2010).

This article seeks to identify indicators of ‘good practice’ in participatory research (PR), in particular in a natural resource management (NRM) context. I believe the value of this list is not limited NRM and can also easily be applied to the benefit of more general participatory action research projects.

The article presents a list of principles of good practice in PR in NRM that the authors hope may assist in planning and assessing PR methodologies. I found the most useful part of the article to be the appendices, which listed the suggested principles and indicators of good practice in a clear table. Also of interest was that accompanying list of indicators of good practice (generated at a workshop), from which the other list evolved.

The authors stress the importance of designing research activities to fit with existing local and research contexts. They intersperse case studies throughout their recommendations to assist in providing examples of such contexts. These case studies take up half of the entire paper and it often feels like more detail is covered in the specifics of the case studies than in the overriding theory and description of the principles. However, the case studies do make the article much more engaging to read, breaking up what could otherwise be a dry list of methodological requirements.

E Wong May 2010