Matrix Scoring and Ranking

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.