intelligent measurement

From broad goals to specific indicators

July 30, 2008 at 6:16 am Leave a comment

No doubt you have heard of the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs), eight broad goals on poverty, ill-health, etc, agreed upon by all countries to try and reach by 2015.

From a monitoring and evaluation point-of-view, what is interesting is that these goals are broad sweeping statements, such as:

Goal 1: Eradicate Extreme Hunger and Poverty

Goal 3: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women

One could ask – how can these broad goals be possibly monitored and evaluated?

As detailed on this MDGs monitoring website, what has been done is to set specific indicators for each goal, for example:

Goal 3: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women

Description: Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and in all levels of education no later than 2015

Indicators:
3.1 Ratios of girls to boys in primary, secondary and tertiary education
3.2 Share of women in wage employment in the non-agricultural sector
3.3 Proportion of seats held by women in national parliament

So from broad goals, the MDGs focus on two to seven specific indicators per goal that they are monitoring. That’s an interesting approach, as often we see broad goals set by organisations and then no attempt made to actually detail any indicators.

the MDGs monitoring website plays an active role in monitoring these indicators combining quantitative data (statistics) and qualitative data (case studies) – also an interesting approach to show how such indicators can be tracked.

Glenn

Entry filed under: Development evaluation, Evaluation methodology, Evaluation tools (surveys, interviews..), General. Tags: indicators, m&e, mdg, monitoring.