Compare methods

	Transect Walk	Matrix Scoring and Ranking
Field	Anthropology	Anthropology
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1994	1994
Originator	Participatory Rural Appraisal tradition (Robert Chambers and colleagues)	Participatory Rural Appraisal tradition (Robert Chambers and colleagues)
Type	Systematic observational walk along a line across a community with local informants	Participatory scoring of options against locally generated criteria in a matrix
Seminal source	Chambers, R. (1994). The origins and practice of participatory rural appraisal. World Development, 22(7), 953–969.	Chambers, R. (1994). The origins and practice of participatory rural appraisal. World Development, 22(7), 953–969.
Aliases	Transect Diagram, Walking Transect, Transect Survey, Cross-Section Walk	Matrix Scoring, Preference Matrix, Pairwise and Matrix Ranking, Criteria Scoring Matrix
Related	4	4
Summary	A transect walk is a participatory rural appraisal tool in which researchers and local informants walk together along a deliberately chosen line that cuts across the main land-use zones of a community, systematically observing and recording what they see. As they move from, say, riverbank to fields to settlement to hillside, they note soils, vegetation, crops, water, livestock, infrastructure, and the problems and opportunities of each zone. The walk culminates in a transect diagram — a cross-sectional sketch that summarizes how resources and constraints change along the route.	Matrix scoring and ranking is a participatory rural appraisal tool in which community members evaluate a set of options — crop varieties, services, trees, livestock breeds, sources of water — against criteria they themselves generate, arranged as a matrix. Options run along one axis and criteria along the other, and participants score each cell, typically by placing a number of counters such as seeds or stones to show how well an option performs on that criterion. Summing the scores across criteria produces a ranking of the options that reflects the community's own values and priorities.