Compare methods

	Transect Walk	Institutional Venn Diagram
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 diagram of local institutions sized and positioned by importance and closeness
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	Chapati Diagram, Institutional Relationship Diagram, Venn Diagramming, Organizational Mapping
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.	An institutional Venn diagram, often called a chapati or relationship diagram, is a participatory rural appraisal tool in which community members represent the organizations and institutions in their lives as circles and arrange them to show importance and relationships. The size of each circle reflects how important or influential the institution is, and its position — how far from the community and how much it overlaps with other circles — shows how close and how connected it is. The finished diagram is a community-drawn map of its institutional landscape and the social distance between people and the bodies that affect them.