PDA has a strong reputation for qualitative research having evolved our practice and capacity over the last 15 years with our roots in Participatory Rapid/Rural Appraisal (PRA) methods and approaches. Several of PDA’s senior personnel and associates were part of some of the early PRA work undertaken in Ghana and elsewhere in the late 1990s, led by Robert Chambers. More recently we have complemented this with the ability to do quantitative surveys, enabling us to use a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods.
We have undertaken many pieces of national research on a wide variety of themes, sometimes working simultaneously in all of Ghana’s 10 regions. We have also coordinated several large scale (3000 questionnaires) surveys. We adapt our methods to each piece of research, working closely with each client to find the best approach to achieving the desired result. We also relish opportunities to embrace and explore new methods such as the Reality Check and Participatory Impact Assessment & Learning Approach (PIALA) approaches we have been working with recently.
As a development organisation that is committed to and interested in working on processes that seek to strengthen and secure the rights of citizens, research is a key component of our work. The REL Unit is a knowledge production hub in PDA and plays a critical role in knowledge development and capacity building by conducting…