Step 3: Indicators and Benchmarks

Now that you have a theory of change and a logic model that include the outcomes you expect to achieve, it is time to develop indicators. Indicators are an easily measurable way to both describe and measure an issue of interest or an outcome. In terms of measurement, indicators are evidence of the constancy and or change that have occurred because a participant has engaged with your program. These changes can be in individual e.g., youth skills, behavior, knowledge, or health and can also be community-wide, e.g., infant mortality, school dropout, rates of college attendance, etc.

When conducting an evaluation, there are several uses for indicators (adapted from Moore, K.A. and Brown, B.V. (2003). The uses and misuses of social indicators: implications for public policy. Child Trends Research Brief, Washington D.C.: Child Trends.)

Monitoring outcomes - indicators can be used to monitor how young people are doing in a particular area, e.g., drug-use, or can be used to monitor how communities are doing e.g., how a particular program or policy affects poverty.
Setting goals (benchmark setting) - indicators can be used to set benchmarks for how they want their young people or their communities to look over some period of time.
Increasing accountability - indicators can be used to measure outcomes of programs. These outcomes are different from measuring things like how many people use a program, and instead focus on what improvements are being made from participating in that program. It is important to choose indicators carefully when looking at increased accountability, to make sure that the program can actually control changes for the indicator.
Reflective practice - indicators can be used as formal measures of the outcomes of a logic model and can determine whether the program is actually accomplishing its objectives.

Identifying appropriate indicators is important because they will help you to measure how your program is impacting the people and communities it is trying to reach. Indicators must be directly tied to the expected program outcome and must be realistic in terms of the impact you can expect your program to have. For example, if you are a very small community based organization working on enhancing literacy, you would not want to use a statewide indicator for literacy as a measure of your success.

Guidelines for Choosing Indicators

Indicators should be:

Reflective of your program's activities and outcomes
Easily measurable.
Adaptable to changes in program activities.
Logically connects to what is measured.
Understandable to all stakeholders

Sample indicators:

Below are examples of indicators that might be selected for a community based program designed to enhance youth civic engagement.

Outcome goal: Increased civic engagement

Indicators:

Communicates with elected officials about social policy.
Participates in volunteer activities.
Votes (if of voting age)
Knowledge about public policy

Data for indicators come from a wide variety of resources including census data, research, vital statistics, community agency utilization data, hospitals, etc. There are several excellent sites for finding existing indicators, which are listed below. Indicator data can also be derived from local departments of education, health departments, etc. In addition, you can collect your own indicator data through the use of survey instruments.

Examples from Practice: Indicators

Tutoring Plus of Cambridge (http://www.tutoringplus.org) is an organization whose theory of change is "By structuring time for homework completion, students will increase the quality/correctness and completion of homework assignments. By getting homework done outside of school, this will reinforce what is taught in school, which will in turn increase student learning and feelings about academic efficacy, which will ultimately lead to improved educational success. Indicators of educational success can be grades in school, achievement tests results, state exams, school attendance, grade promotion, HS graduation. Moreover, indicators can be psychosocial including educational aspirations, academic efficacy, and achievement motivation."

When conducting an evalation of their program, Tutoring Plus came up with the following indicators for measuring their program's success:

School grades.
Perceived value of school
Attitude toward homework
Perceived academic efficacy in math and reading
Educational aspirations
Occupational aspirations

Each of these indicators could be measured using different data collection tools and methods.

Benchmarks, which are related to indicators, relate to how much of a change you expect to make from your baseline. In other words, how much of a change in a given indicator would you expect a program participant to make relative to people not participating in the program.

Tools for Indicators and Benchmarks:

Innovation Center for Community and Youth Development - Reflect and Improve: A Toolkit for Engaging Youth and Adults as Partners in Program Evaluation

The Reflect and Improve tool kit is a resource for community-based organizations looking to engage youth and adults in the evaluation of community and youth development initiative. This activity is designed to help organizations who have committed to an evaluation plan begin their work on this plan by identifying indicators and standards.

Also see http://www.theinnovationcenter.org

How to Recognize Quality Youth Program

How to Recognize Quality Youth Program

A recent study commissioned by Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health recommends benchmarks for quality youth programs. The two-year study, conducted by Public/Private Ventures, assessed one of the Foundation's grantmaking programs, which funds services to promote the emotional and behavioral health of preteens.

Below are tools that you can use for creating indicators and benchmarks for your program as well as websites that offer a wide variety of child, family, and community indicators:

Educator's Guide to Evaluating the Use of Technology in Schools and Classrooms
Educator's Guide to Evaluating the Use of Technology in Schools and Classrooms
Designed for use in educational settings, this guide can be expanded for community-based organizations interested in creating their own indicators. It includes a worksheet that you can print in order to develop indicators for your program by walking through the steps of goals, indicators, benchmarks, and measures.

Pennsylvania State Cooperative Extension Program Evaluation Tip Sheet #10
Writing Program Objectives (PDF)
This tip sheet offers 6 steps to writing program objectives, from which indicators and measures can be derived. Although geared toward agricultural programs, the tip sheet can be extended to all community-based programs.

Federal Interagency Forum of Child and Family Statistics
ChildStats.gov
This web site of the Federal Interagency Forum of Child and Family Statistics offers access to federal and state indicators on children and their families. Examples of indicators include population and family characteristics, economic security, health, behavior and social environment, and education.

Annie E. Casey Foundation Kids Count
Kids Count
This website provides national and state by state indicators for the status of child well-being in the United States. The website also includes some international comparisons.

Child Trends DataBank
Child Trends DataBank
This website from Child Trends has over 80 indicators of child well-being including health, social and emotional development, demographics, and family and community. Indicators are offered at the state and local, national, and international levels.

United States Census Bureau
U.S. Census Bureau
The census bureau has a wide variety of national indicators at the national, state, and county levels.

Connect with others

Talk with others in the field who are doing similar work or who have experiences to share. Share your experiences in Indicators and Benchmarks through the Practitioner Database