Success indicators (see my previous post) are crucial to monitoring and measuring the success of a program or service. In this post, I will explain how to develop indicators of success and help you to identify when to use them.
Step 1: Identify Your Team
The research staff should develop indicators of success during the planning phase of your program design process in close collaboration with the program staff. If you don’t have a research team, designate who will be responsible for the oversight of the research. If any government or NGO counterparts are designing the program and have explicit knowledge of the program goals and objectives, you will want to include them.
Step 2: Identify What to Measure
Next, determine which inputs, outputs, or outcomes (see my post: What is a Logic Model?) of the program are most important to track. A program will likely use many indicators to assess the change that results from the intervention. These can be pulled from the program’s logic model, listing all key outputs and outcomes. For example, if you are developing a teen STEM internship program for young women, you might want to measure how the program changes their attitudes toward STEM careers. You may also want to measure any behavior changes that might impact their ability to pursue a career in STEM and their self-efficacy as it relates to STEM careers.
There are two types of indicators, performance indicators and progress indicators. Process indicators consist of inputs and outputs and provide information about the scope and quality of activities implemented; these are considered monitoring indicators. Performance indicators include outcomes and are most commonly used to measure progress towards results; these are considered evaluation indicators.
Step 3: Check that Your Measure are SMART
- Are your goals specific?
- Are they measurable?
- Are they attainable?
- Are your goals relevant?
- Finally, are your goals time-bound?
For more information on developing SMART goals, visit The Essential Guide to Writing SMART Goals.
Step 4: Identify Your Evaluation Timeline
There are two critical pieces of information you will need when developing your evaluation timeline. The first is a reference point. A reference point is a point before, during, or at the end of a program where indicators are used to establish the program’s state in terms of the audience’s knowledge, attitudes, or behavior to provide a point of comparison as the program progresses. Depending on the project and resources, the reference point is often chosen before or at the start of a program to assess the program’s progress over time, but they can be done in the middle of the end of the project when need be. The second thing is when and how often you will collect data. These designated points in time are usually referred to as benchmarks. How often and when you collect data depends mainly on the cost and length of the program. Generally, the more extended funding a program is, the more comprehensive the data collection will be.
In the next post, we will show you how to set baselines and targets using indicators.
**Adapted from https://www.thecompassforsbc.org/how-to-guides/how-develop-indicators
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