Participatory Needs Assessment in Local Communities. Methodological Aspects

Abstract

Participatory needs assessment (PNA) is a research method, based on the principle of participative democracy. PNA offers the right to speak to the people living within local communities and, furthermore, it attempts to place the problems and the solutions submitted by citizens on the decision-makers working agendas. Being often a first stage in the process of research-action, PNA is the most certain modality to find the community members’ perception of their collective needs, as well as their attitudes towards these needs. In this study, I describe the basic methodological elements of PNA and I show both the advantages and the limits of this method, with three cases from today’s literature.