This is Huu-Nhuan Nguyen again (Message 5). As Godswill in Message 6 mentioned, the communication issues exist in ex post impact assessment of agricultural research. From my review of various impact assessment work for agricultural research, especially those in developing countries, I realize that top-down or one-way communication approach has been practiced by many agricultural research projects. In addition, the single quantitative based approach with structured questionnaires and closed questions is likely to help evaluators to get expected information and results rather than to understand how outcomes and impacts are generated and contributed to development. Many agricultural research projects have been also implemented in the least developed regions which are home to many minority ethnic communities. However, impact assessment of these agricultural research projects has been conducted in the national or majority language rather than the minority's. Visual techniques have not been properly used. This sometimes leads to misunderstanding or weak evidence about outcome and impacts. Pretty (1995) also defined two overlapping schools of thought and practice with one emphasis on "participation as a means" to increase the involvement of people in agricultural development processes and another focus on "participation as a fundamental right" to have collective action, empowerment and institution development. Although more efforts have been recently made on using participatory communication strategies to achieve higher participation of local people (key stakeholders and beneficiaries) in impact assessment processes by agricultural research, a lot of them still serve the "fashionable and political correct frill" rather than empowerment of people. Such participatory communication activities focus on making participation "as a means" that inform people and ask them to give answers to impact assessment questions rather than as "an end" that empower people to make their assessment and having own decision on how impact could be sustained. I also agreed with Anna in Message 9 that assessing ex-post impacts of agricultural research project should look at how agricultural research was planned, by whom and with whom and for whom. Impact assessment is therefore designed since the agricultural research project start. The other complementary theory based approach such as theory of change or impact pathway as mentioned by Dr John Mayne (Message 8) could also help to develop a good way for assessing real impacts. In my opinion, an effective communication approach for ex-post impact assessment of agricultural research should put key stakeholders and beneficiaries at the core of impact assessment by empowering them to engage actively in setting impact assessment objectives, defining appropriate impact indicators; developing appropriate method for data collection and analysis and impact sharing mechanism. However, my remaining concern is how to make participatory communication workable in impact assessment because participatory sessions are often time consuming and costly while resource allocation for impact assessment is often limited? I am looking forward to sharing more with you about communication issues in ex-post impact assessment of agricultural research. Nguyen Huu Nhuan PhD Candidate University of Queensland, Australia Mobile:+61 450 268 689 Email: huunhuan.nguyen (at) uqconnect.edu.au ; nguyennhuan1977 (at) gmail.com Reference: Pretty, J. N. (1995). Participatory learning for sustainable agriculture. World Development, 23(8), 1247-1263. [To contribute to this conference, send your message to [log in to unmask] For further information, see http://www.fao.org/nr/research-extension-systems/res-home/news/detail/en/c/217706/ ]. ######################################################################## To unsubscribe from the Impact-L list, click the following link: https://listserv.fao.org/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=Impact-L&A=1