Force Field Analysis (FFA): A Tool for Context Assessment/ Conflict Analysis in Development Work

In development work / community processes such as Peacebuilding and Conflict Transformation, Gender Inclusivity programs, Community Development, etc. the success of the projects, hence positive impact to the intended target community/ people depends highly on the ability of the development workers to do a solid situational analysis and ONLY plan based on the results of the analysis.

What is Force Field Analysis?

Force Field Analysis (FFA) is an analysis tool that can be used to capture different data so as to inform the knowledge of a situation/ context. Data that is captured by this tool include Attitudes, Behaviour, Actors, as well as Systems and Structures.

The importance of Force Field Analysis is to help development workers identify forces/ factors that may boost their work (called Driving Forces), as well as forces that may thwart their (development workers) efforts towards achieving desired goals (called Hindering Forces or Dividers.

How to Conduct Force Field Analysis

• Identify the Attitudes, Behaviours, Systems & Structures, and the Actors that support your mission. If you are working in the Peacebuilding and Conflict Transformation, identify all these forces that reduce conflict / boost peace as these are the forces that are already working towards towards the goal you have in mind. If you are working in incorporating gender inclusivity, look at the forces that work with you. These could form great alliances

• Identify the Attitudes, Behaviours, Systems & Structures, and the Actors that thwart your efforts and derail your mission. If you are working in the Peacebuilding and Conflict Transformation field, identify all the forces that support polarization along gender lines as these are the forces that you will derail you. These factors could hinder you from achieving success.

• List the Central Element (this is the issue you are working on) as shown in the image above.

• Write the Goal (Mission) you envision for your project in the last column as indicated in the image above

• Keeping in mind the goal of your project, develop activities that will reinforce / support/ boost the forces you identified as working with you/ towards. It could be subtle as meeting actors who may have data that is relevant to your work (so they can witness your goodwill and share information with you), or as intense as forming working alliances.

• Keeping in Mind the goal you have for your project, develop activities/ strategies that minimize the impact of the forces that are against your desired goal.

• If you prefer, you can include the information and planning strategies you identified above in any of the tools you use for Planning Projects’. Do your implementation and when doing your Monitoring and Evaluation, refer to the data (you can gather great qualitative data using the story-telling tool) you had acquired and use the Story-Telling tool to get data that shows you progress.

Why Use Force Field Analysis?

Besides helping development workers / peacebuilders plan better, Force Field Analysis is a tool used for Conflict Sensitivity. This means that multiple aspects are captured by the toll to help a development worker visualize intended/ unintended impacts that his/ her actions towards a goal might produce. In this essence, the captured data should enable the worker/ peacebuilder to minimize activities that may worsen the situation he/she working on/in while maximizing positive impact.

Conflict Sensitivity Tools help development workers capture and process intended/ unintended impacts of projects beforehand; allows conflict-sensitive planning.

Conflict Sensitivity refers the conscious efforts that are geared towards capturing, analysing, and processing the intended and unintended impacts of any intervention in development work. Conflict sensitivity Tools help capture and process this information.

As part of the wider Conflict Analysis, Conflict Sensitivity seeks to capture and visualize the unintended negative impacts that a project/ intervention may have in a bid to plan (re-plan) peacebuilding projects in a way that maximizes the positive impacts and reduces the negative impact of the intervention. There are several Conflict Analysis Tools that can be used to conduct the Conflict Sensitivity of a project or proposed intervention.