Qualitative approaches: rapid appraisal of agricultural innovation systems (RAAIS)

• It makes a sequential use of different data collection methods, from identifying stakeholders to organising in-depth interviews, multi-stakeholder workshops, and surveys and complementing them with secondary data analyses.
• It targets different stakeholder groups relevant to the entry theme and creates the awareness necessary to explore and design solutions for addressing it.
• It facilitates depicting key entry points for innovation to solve problems at different levels of a system through analysing: (1) interactions between different dimensions (e.g. biophysical, technological, socio-cultural, economic, institutional and political), levels (e.g. national, regional and local) and stakeholder dynamics; (2) innovation capacity in agrifood systems; and (3) the existence and performance of the agricultural innovation system.
• It can be applied fairly rapidly and provide insights about the entry theme with relatively limited resources.

It is a diagnostic tool based on:

• The identification of stakeholder groups and the diversity within them.
• The identification of the structural conditions enabling or constraining innovation(s) in an agricultural innovation system (AIS).
• An analysis of the interactions within the system based on interviews and focus groups.

RAAIS aims to provide a coherent set of:

• Analyses of innovation capacity and support in the agricultural system with the inclusion of its structural conditions (e.g. actors, interactions and infrastructure).
• Specific entry points for innovation needed for addressing complex agricultural problems.
• Generic entry points for deciding on policy arrangements for enhancing innovation capacity and supporting the agricultural system.

• Understanding the conceptual framework of RAAIS.
• Evaluator with experience in using RAAIS.
• Iterative and flexible evaluation design adaptable to context.
• Stakeholders’ engagement during all stages of the evaluation. 
• Good facilitation skills. 
• The combination of multiple data collection methods: multi-stakeholder workshops, semi-structured in-depth interviews, questionnaires and secondary data analysis.

• four sessions for identifying constraints and challenges. 
• five sessions for categorising constraints and challenges. 
• two sessions for exploring specific and generic entry points for innovation. 
• one session for feasibility analysis. 
• one session for benefit analysis. 
• two sessions for prioritisation and developing basic action plans (see Table 4 of RAAIS Toolkit 2^nd Edition).

Step 4 – Analyse the outcomes of the RAAIS Lite workshops 

If resources permit, make preparations for the RAAIS complete module. This includes follow-up in-depth interviews, surveys and secondary data analyses necessary to validate the outcomes of the RAAIS Lite workshop and further assess the feasibility of the prioritised entry points for innovation. 

Step 5 – Organise RAAIS interviews with representatives of the various stakeholder groups

To guide the semi-structured interviews, a topic list is prepared and tailored for each interview to identify and anticipate interesting storylines related to the problem under review and to validate data gathered during previous interviews or RAAIS Lite workshops.

Step 6 – Conduct surveys for a broader study among specific groups of stakeholders to explore some of the constraints identified from the workshops and interviews

Step 7 – Analyse secondary data (e.g. quantitative administrative or statistical data, policy documents, project proposals and reports, laws or legal procedures, project evaluations etc.)

Step 8 – Combine the information gathered above to estimate the agricultural system's innovation potential and identify both specific and generic entry points for innovation

Step 9: Optional 

Expand the tool with the RAAIS theory of change to develop action plans for implementing the identified innovations and with RAAIS monitoring and evaluation to enable ongoing reflection on the theory of change and action plan implementation, ensuring that outcomes and impacts are achieved.

• RAAIS is a diagnostic tool that supports and guides the integrated analysis of complex agricultural problems, innovation capacity in the agricultural system and the performance of the agricultural innovation support systems.
• RAAIS combines multiple qualitative and quantitative methods, and insider (stakeholders) and outsider (researchers) analyses, allowing for critical triangulation and validation of the gathered data. This approach can provide specific entry points for innovations to address complex agricultural problems and generic entry points for strengthening innovation capacity and improving the functioning of the agricultural innovation support system.
• Adapting a modular sequence of data collection methods, in which workshops provide a ‘fast-track’ approach to identifying entry points for innovation, followed by more in-depth interviews and stakeholder surveys, enhances RAAIS’ diagnostic capacity.
• The participatory development of concrete action plans based on RAAIS can provide a basis for continued multi-stakeholder collaboration to operationalise and implement specific and generic entry points for innovation.

• identification of the included protentional relationship between the preference for growing local, aromatic rice varieties (socio-cultural dimension);
• the low capacity of farmers to purchase certified seeds (economic dimension);
• the spread of parasitic weed seeds through the local rice seed system (technological dimension);
• along with the untimely and insufficient availability of agricultural inputs provided by the government (institutional dimension); and
• limited interaction and collaboration among networks of key stakeholders (political dimension) that form additional bottlenecks for addressing such problems.

As for the provision of generic entry points for innovation, RAAIS showed that the absence of poor performance of fertiliser distribution infrastructure, limited farmer-extensionist interaction and lack of functional institutions for quality control were constraining the innovation capacity to fertilising strategies that could have helped mitigate parasitic weed problems.

For more information see: 

• Schut, M., Klerkx, L., Rodenburg, J., Kayeke, J., Hinnou, L. C., Raboanarielina, C. M., Adegbola, P. Y., Van Ast, A., & Bastiaans, L. (2015). RAAIS: Rapid Appraisal of Agricultural Innovation Systems (Part i). A diagnostic tool for integrated analysis of complex problems and innovation capacity. Agricultural Systems, 132, 1–11.
• Schut, M., Rodenburg, J., Klerkx, L., Hinnou, L. C., Kayeke, J., & Bastiaans, L. (2015). Participatory appraisal of institutional and political constraints and opportunities for innovation to address parasitic weeds in rice. Crop Protection, 74, 158–170.
• Barrett, T., Feola, G., Krylova, V. and Khusnitdinova, M. (2017). The application of Rapid Appraisal of Agricultural Innovation Systems (RAAIS) to agricultural adaptation to climate change in Kazakhstan: a critical evaluation. Agricultural Systems, 151. p.

• The RAAIS Toolkit 2^nd Edition, 2017: RAAIS Toolkit - WUR