Community Group Discussions/Community Meetings

How do we Evaluate Programmes?

Data collection methods

Discussions that bring together all members of the community, for example the village meeting, are called community group discussions (or Community Meetings). Interacting with a community group together provides access to the knowledge of several people at once. There is also cross-checking from others in the groups. Most fieldwork situations require that the first major meeting in a community should involve all that can attend from the village. PPA fieldwork will find such meetings useful as the starting point. They can be used to introduce the purpose of the research process, to get a general understanding of the main characteristics of the site and to begin identifying themes and smaller groups that the team can work with in later meetings.

Research teams should however know that community group discussions are not particularly good for revealing sensitive information, and responses may as a result be misleading. Thus facilitators should proactively encourage alternative views and opinions in such discussions, but should equally be on the lookout for those who are not participating. Informal conversations afterwards can be useful for getting information from people who did not express their views during the community group discussions.

Owing to the often very mixed nature of community groups, research team members should always be adequately prepared.

See also:

Meetings, Problem Solving and Decision Making

Is There Really a Problem?  How basic communication skills can be used to determine if there really is a problem, and then at how to identify and define it. Sometimes the problem is not what is going on. It is how you are reacting to it, or what you are expecting.   Guideline: 10 steps to take in defining a problem