Revolutions in Development Inquiry (Robert Chambers): Book Review

A summary of 300-500 words has to be made out of the 1st chapter of this book.

Experiences of researchers in the 1970s, in countries like Kenya, India and Sri Lanka, revealed that large-scale multi-subject questionnaires for rural research had several limitations; they were huge, laborious, costly and vulnerable to many errors. Researchers spent a lot of time conducting these surveys and yet there were several questions that were not a part of these, but should have been there as they mattered to the community. Most of the data that these surveys generated were bad and unusable.

• Dinosaurs – large-scale multi-subject questionnaire surveys – costly, time consuming, ineffective. Large-scale multi-subject questionnaire surveys are costly, time consuming, ineffective and there is a need for better methods such as Participatory rural appraisal (PRA)
• Jon Moris, on the basis of his review of 40 large questionnaire surveys, concluded that a reasonable rule of thumb was that processing, analysis and writing up would take twice as long and cost twice as much as budgeted.
• Questionnaire surveys in developed and developing countries (Should I include points, there is a comparison table)
• Participatory rural appraisal (PRA) better than traditional questionnaire method
• Analysis overnight on a laptop is done ‘by us’. A better alternative is likely to be analysis ‘by them’, in which case they will be empowered, will learn for themselves (for example a relationship between source of water and episodes of diarrhoea) and will be more likely to act.
• Older men have a notorious and lamentable tendency to talk about themselves and their experiences. Need to include views of people of other age groups as well?

Large-scale questionnaire investigations have proved robustly sustainable due to factors such as demand, utility, routine reproduction and supply; more timely processing – with shorter gestation periods; mixed methods with qual–quant sequences; failure to perceive alternatives; and power and pathology.

In most cases, these have been made to work with standard social treatments at high cost, one example being the study of the effects of women’s groups in Nepal on neonatal mortality.

However, with Community-Driven Development becoming popular, large-scale questionnaire investigations approach seems to be a costly as well as an ineffective way of trying to learn more about the development of the community.
The need of the hour is to explore other approaches and methods, something that engages the community more, for finding out more about the about the complexities pertaining to rural development.

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