Choose Indicators - What would these conditions look like if you could see them?  How can you measure these conditions

This step involves deciding what you will use to describe a result in your community and measure progress toward it.

For example, if your group decides to use healthy adults as a result, indicators might include

• Tobacco-free adults
• Adults exercising regularly
• Adults with a healthy diet
• Adults with stable housing (e.g., not homeless)

Section contents: Thoughts about indicators
Indicator selection process

Thoughts about indicators:

1. All indicators have two kinds of meaning; one is how they are understood by the general public and the other is the technical definition, involving exactly which data are used and where they come from.  Each technical definition of an indicator is a new entry on your list of options.  For example, "Regular exercise" might mean:
   • a reasonably active lifestyle in the general community, but
   • the CDC has two technical definitions for this term: (1) any leisure-time physical activity in the previous mounth, and (2) "meets physical activity recommendations," which means either 20-minute minimum sessions of vigorous activity three times a week or 30-minute minimum sessions of moderate activity at least five times a week.  The second CDC definition includes work-related and leisure time activity.  The data source for adults for both of these indicators is the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System.
2. Indicators must be measurable, but should not include statements about if or how much they will change.  Evaluation using the Results Accountability method depends on identifying trends in indicator values and change in those trends.  If an indicator includes a specific target value, it will be harder to accommodate change and more difficult to report progress.  Changing indicators interferes with continuity in your reports.
   • If your indicator includes a target (for example, a 10% increase in the number of tobacco-free adults), you will need to change it each time you change the target.
   • To be believable, targets need to modify an indicator's baseline value, but as your baseline changes so will your sense of what is possible.  A target may include an unintended message about failure.
   • One implementation of the indicator "increase to 30% the percentage of adults that are tobacco free" is that tobacco use by 70% of adults might be acceptable.
   • Even if you demonstrate change, you risk being called a failure if you do not reach your target.  For example, if the target is "a 15% increase in the number of adults that meet CDC physical activity recommendations," is a 12% improvement a failure?  Targets may be useful tools and should be kept from your indicators.

Indicator selection process:

1. Ask a broad group of interested individuals and agency representatives to brainstorm a list of possible indicators.  Include as many people and perspectives in your community as possible in this process.  Technical assistance in finding data related to your indicators may be available from university staff, community planners and/or state program staff.

2. Apply three criteria to each indicator:

   Data power - For which ones would you have good quality data available in a timely basis?

   Communication power – Does the indicator communicate effectively to a broad range of audiences?  Which two or three would best explain what your result means in your community to a stranger in the street?

   Proxy power – If you said it in plain English, would this indicator have the same meaning as your result?
   Indicators may be related to each other.  For example, diet, exercise and body weight are all reasonable ways to describe healthy adults.  Pick the indicators that are most likely to match changes in others that are similar.

   Tip – During this process, listen to people in your group who do not agree with everyone else.  They often know something the others may not.

   
   

3. Identify primary and secondary indicators and make a data development agenda.

   Primary indicators are the three or four most important measures.  You will use them as substitutes for your result in presenting information about how well you are doing to the public.

   Secondary indicators are all of the other measures for which you have good data.  You will need them to complete your behind-the-baselines discussion and to plan your programs.

   A data development agenda is the set of priorities for improving your ability to measure change toward a result.  It is often hard to find good information, especially about certain populations such as young children.  In Alaska, information about your community may be hard to find.