Indroduction to Performance Accountability measures

Performance Measures are used to define your program success.  In the Results Accountability strategy, indicators are different from performance measures, because they are used to assess the well-being of the entire population which includes you customers as a sub-group.

• Performance measure data are collected from a group of people that you know: your customers.
• You are more likely to be able to have access to high quality data about your customers so you may be able to produce precise information for your performance measures.
• An indicator may be very similar to a performance measure, but you may not know most of the people who give you data because you collect these data about an entire population.
• You are more likely to have not-so-good data about your community, so you may have to depend on substitute measures and/or estimates information for your indicators.

The Results Accountability method is built on four concepts: quantity, quality, effort and effect.  When made into a table, these concepts support five questions.

Of these questions, the most important is at the bottom - Is anyone better off?

The questions on top are the easiest to answer and have the best data - How much did we do?  How well did we do it?

By itself, the least important question for an evaluation is - How much change did we produce?  The problem is that this information has no context.  You and your users need more than raw numbers to understand if the change that was produced was important.  This question is necessary, thoug, because it gives you part of the answer to - Did the change we caused make a difference?

As with population accountability indicators, performance measures have two definitions:

• The lay definition is one that anyone could understand.
• The technical definition is very specific.  It defines who or which activities are counted for the measure or numerator, if it's a percentage.&nbps; If it is a percentage, the technical definition also defines who or which activities are counted in the denominator.

How can you measure if our customers are better off?

Nearly all of the measures of the effects of the program will focus on changes in skills or knowledge, attitude, behavior or circumstances, with the latter including changes in the environment or policy.

You could start thinking about measures using two questions:

• If your program does a really good job, how are your customers' lives better?
• If your program does a really poor job, how would your customers' lives be worse?

At this stage, your task is to come up with lots of measures.  This is a good opportunity to work with others to make sure you consider all of the options.  You could include program managers and executives, staff, customers, and community leaders.

Some will be more important than others; you will decide later which measures you will use.

How can we measure if we are delivering services well?

The measures used in this part focus on program activities and the quality of the services provided or materials developed.  Program managers and staff may be particularly helpful in creating these lists.

Measures for - How much did we do?

These measures are counts - of your customers or the activities, materials or services your program produced.

• When you think about your customers, ask if you need to count them in groups, such as by age, sex or health problem.
• You can turn your activities and services into counts, too.  For example, a food pantry that collects and distributes meals could count the pounds of food collected and/or the number of meals of food distributed.

Measures for - How well did we do it?

You may already use some measures of quality because of regulations or other program requirements.

• Are there customer service measures that are often used by programs like yours?
• When you think aboutu your program's activities, materials or services, how do you usually talk about their quality?  Some common strategies include timeliness, accuracy, ease-of-understanding, or completeness.

At this stage, your task is to come up with lots of measures.  Some will be more important than others; you will decide later which measures you will use.