DESIGNING INDICATORS AND TRACKING CHANGE
Tracking socioeconomic outcomes helps governments make better decisions by showing where needs are greatest and indicating whether certain programs are effective in addressing those needs. The ability to track outcomes related to goals and objectives is key to good governance.
Indicators are sets of data that measure outcomes. For example, if one of your government’s goals is to have strong community knowledge of culture and language an indicator could be the “percentage of citizens who are fluent in the language.”
There is not one ideal set of socioeconomic indicators—the indicators each government chooses to track will be unique. Indicators directly reflect the unique priorities and aspirations of your government, so the process of selecting socioeconomic indicators is an important exercise in self-determination.
This page:
- Provides tools to help develop a set of socioeconomic indicators that meet the needs of your government (see Designing Indicators).
- Provides introductory information about defining, evaluating, and tracking indicators (see Defining and Evaluating Indicators and Tracking Change).
- Provides introductory information about developing analysis plans (see Developing an Analysis Plan).
- Provides example indicators developed by other groups (see Indicator Resources).
Designing Indicators
This document presents strategies and tools to carry out indicator development, including engaging the community and using logic models to define measurable outcomes. This resource also provides sources for sample indicators.
Defining and Evaluating Indicators
When constructing your indicator, consider these criteria:
- Relevance: How well does this measure what you are interested in?
- Feasibility: Do you have the data necessary to produce an accurate estimate (e.g., is there data available on language fluency)?
- Simplicity: Can this indicator be readily explained and understood by non-technical audiences?
- Transparency: Are others able to access the methodology and details to understand how this indicator has been constructed?
- Reliability: Is the data you have and the method you have proposed reliable (e.g., are the assumptions you made reasonable)?
How you construct your indicators affects how you use them to track outcomes (see Tracking Change) and what analysis is possible (see Developing an Analysis Plan).
The Social Well-being Working Group of the Collaborative Federal Policy Development Process developed an Indicator Identification/Development Framework to define and evaluate indicators. The Framework outlines a technical process to identify strengths and weaknesses of potential indicators.
Tracking Change
This document discusses how to track indicators in comparison to a reference point (i.e., change over time or change compared to a different population).
Developing an Analysis Plan
Always develop your analysis plan before you start collecting data to ensure that you collect data in the right format.
Start by thinking about the reporting you want to do. It may help to create mock data tables and charts (without any real data) to fully think through how you want to present the data. Review the Data Analysis section below to plan the types of statistics you want to show.
As discussed in Tracking Change, indicator measures are most useful when they can be compared to a reference point. There are two types of reference points: the same population at a different time point (change over time) and a comparison population at the same time point. You will likely track all indicators over time. If you compare different populations, ensure that you have the same data for both your population of interest and the comparison population. If you are collecting data through a survey, use the same survey questions as were used to generate the comparison data set.
Consider the sub-populations you will want to look at. Looking at differences between subpopulations can help you understand how to target programs and services. For example, do you want to look at responses by age, gender, or income? Many governments are implementing Gender Based Analysis Plus, a tool for understanding how policies, programs, and initiatives impact different subsets of the population. The Government of Canada offers a free online course found here that can help you decide for which subsets of the population to generate or report indicators.
Make sure that you collect the data so that you can divide your data set into these populations.
Indicator Resources
The BC First Nations Data Governance Initiative (BCFNDGI) document Measuring Wellness: An Indicator Development Guide for First Nations is a comprehensive guide to developing and tracking indicators.
The BCFNDGI document The 7 Cs: A First Nations’ Guide to Planning and Reporting Standards is another helpful document for guiding the development of indicators.
The Social Well-being Working Group of the Collaborative Federal Policy Development Process developed an Indicator Identification/Development Framework to define and evaluate indicators. The Framework outlines a technical process to identify strengths and weaknesses of potential indicators.
Sample indicators:
- The surveys listed in External data sources are a great source of well-researched indicators and survey questions.
- Measuring Wellness: An Indicator Development Guide for First Nations includes a list of sample wellness indicators in the areas of ancestry/culture/tradition, education, employment, health/well-being, employment, housing/infrastructure, government, environment, and social.
- The First Nations Health Authority (FNHA) wellness indicators.
- The OECD webpage Measuring well-being and progress: Understanding the issue.
- Indigenous Wellness Indicators, Indicators in the City of Vancouver Healthy City Strategy.
- Health Indicators of Inuit Nunangat within the Canadian Context.
- Saskatchewan First Nations Regional Dashboard.
- The Alberta First Nations Information Governance Centre report Indigenous Health Indicators.
The webinar below is a presentation by Doreen MacNeil (CIHI) and Harmony Johnson on designing social well-being indicators and tracking change. For more webinars covering content in this toolkit click here.
