You might find the literature related to Armatya Sen's Capabilities approach useful.

Yours,

David

 Dear David, thank you for your answer. I am endorsing the capability approach in my study. The participatory approach is one of the way to select poverty and wellbeing dimensions, as often cited in the literature, but I found very few examples at country level or macro-regional level, more at community/village level, but that is outside the scope of my research.

you can find here

http://www.ophi.org.uk/

all that you want except theory,

best wishes

e.

Dear Ernesto, thank you for your comment. I know very well the work of OPHI and to my knowledge they have never been engaged in a participatory exercise for the selection of poverty dimensions. Please, point me out some examples, in case I missed them. Thanks!

http://www.ophi.org.uk/research/multidimensional-poverty/how-to-apply-alkire-foster/

I do not know if it can help you...

Hi Francesco!

We have here in Brazil a very interesting research coordinated by Flavio Comim (do you know him?) which deals with something like this... They have conducted a field research asking people about the impressions on poverty and the importance people attaches to different dimensions... quite interesting indeed. One major problem: the publications regarding this research are all in portuguese. Is that a problem for you? If it is not, I can send you the main report. Best wishes!!

Hi Ely,

It is great to hear from you. I am definitely interested. Though I do not read portuguese, I guess I would get the most important issues. If you have any summary or briefing paper in English, please send them, too!

Thanks a lot, best,

Francesco.

That is great, Francesco! You can definetely extract the main issues, for sure. I am sending  it via private message here at ResearchGate. Let me know if you have any problem getting it... Best! Ely.

Hi Francesco,

I have been involved in a number of participatory studies of poverty in my previous work at the World Bank--including in Uttar Pradesh, India (with Barbara Parker) as well as more recently in Vietnam and Myanmar.  Are you including these studies under the general reference to "voices of the poor" which was also financed by the World Bank?. I would be happy to dig up some references if you don't have these already.   

This small-area, high-information idea of Rapid Rural Appraisal and then Participatory Rural Appraisal (I believe that was what USAID championed) is rather complicated because it relies on two conflicting ideas of

quality - you need N approaching asymptotic bounds to get tight fits on your coefficients (whether you're counting heads, depth or severity as in FGT)

survey capability: transport, respondent burden, training of interviewers for standardation of responses, and so many more opportunities for error.

Not to mention your main variable: wealth, income, consumption? 

Hi Valerie,

Thank you. I was mainly referring to all participatory exercises at the basis of the WB report edited by Narayan et al "Crying Out for Change: Voices of the Poor". It would be interesting to have more recent works like this, any reference is highly welcome!

Best,

Francesco.

I'm not sure if these are exact fits but in the U.S.A. two examples:

1) The National Cancer Institute funded 25 communities to conduct a multi-year initiate to support a participatory process aimed at reducing cancer health disparities among medically under served communities. The initiative was called the Community Networks Program to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities (CNP). My firm produced the evaluation of the CNP. You can find out more on the NCI's Center to Reduce Cancer Health disparities website.

2) The Annie E. Casey Foundation in Baltimore, Maryland funded a multi-year national initiative on community building in multiple communities across the USA to identify strategies to build community and reduce poverty. You can find references on the Foundation's website.

Dear John,

Thanks for your references!

I hope they are useful!

I want to share an example. 

Around ten women had assembled to discuss the goal of a livelihood and microfinance project,  how they would measure if it had been achieved and actually assessed progress. The steps that I follow are:

1. Divide the participants into groups of 5-6 women.

2. Ask the participants whether they know the goals of the project/programme. If they are not aware, share the goal with them. The goal needs to be written in big letters and on a big piece of paper!

3. Give the participants flash cards.

4. Ask the group what is required to achieve the goal. If they are non-literate they can draw on the flash card. Do not stick at this stage, as they may change their mind.

5. Then ask - to achieve what is written in the flash cards, what are the measures required and proceed similarly.

6. The participants may change their mind on the level of flash cards. Give them time to come to a firm conclusion and then stick the flash cards.

7. Now give the participants a pen, and ask them to rate achievement of indicator at each level. A rating of * means not achieved, a rating of *** means fully achieved, and a rating of **means partially achieved.

.

Interestingly the women stated the goal of the project was poverty reduction of women. The women identified two pathways to poverty reduction- increase women’s income and reduce household expenditure.  They observed that women’s income could increase if women-managed  income-generation programmes expanded  (many) and if their control over existing income enhanced (a few).  They further shared that women-managed income generation can expand only if they had livestock (many) or land (few) on their names.  The women noted that their control over income would be reflected in them having savings accounts on their name.  On the expenditure front, majority of women stated that expenditure can come down if men drank less and a few mentioned that if domestic violence was less health expenditure would be reduced.  Women observed that group should collectively intervene on these issues.

The project, the women observed, had had a moderate impact on most of the indicators they had listed, other than reduction in alcohol consumption and violence against women.  While the group did intervene in instances of violence against women it did not always meet with success

Source: Murthy, 2015, Tool kit on gender sensitive participatory methods for evaluation, Institute of Social Studies, New Delhi (being published in a month)