• Home
• Site Map
• Foreword
  • Foreword
  • Contributors & Copyright
• Introduction
  • Introduction
  • Methods
  • Sites
    • Why Pando and East Kalimantan?
    • Municipal Governments and Decentralisation in Bolivia
    • Municipal Governments and Decentralisation in Indonesia
• Part I. Concepts
  • Wellbeing and Poverty
    • Poverty is More Than Low Income
    • Poverty is a Lack of Wellbeing
    • Poverty and Wellbeing Have Many Dimensions
    • Further Reading
  • Local Governments and Poverty
    • How can Local Governments Reduce Poverty?
    • Four Steps to Improve Local Governmental Action
    • Further Reading
  • Forests and Poverty
    • How do Forests Influence Poverty?
    • What is Poverty in Forest Communities?
    • Are Forests Safety Nets, Poverty Traps or Escape Routes?
    • Further Reading
• Part II. Tools
  • Monitoring
    • What is monitoring?
    • Types of Monitoring
    • Indicators
    • When to monitor?
    • Who conducts monitoring?
    • Linking monitoring to planning
  • Participatory Planning
    • What is participatory planning?
    • Why is participatory planning useful?
    • When and where is participatory planning done?
    • Who should participate?
  • Tool 1: Interactive Mapping
    • What is interactive mapping?
    • Interactive mapping step-by-step
    • Use interactive mapping for monitoring
  • Tool 2: Wellbeing Monitoring
    • What is a local wellbeing monitoring system?
    • Wellbeing monitoring step-by-step
    • Step 1: Define purpose, develop plan and budget
    • Step 2: Develop local poverty indicators and formulate survey questions
    • Step 3: Design the sampling strategy
    • Step 4: Train staff and perform the survey
    • Step 5: Analyse and present the data
    • Step 6: Present findings
  • Tool 3: Community Evaluation
    • Evaluating local government programmes through community focus groups
    • Steps 1-3
    • Steps 4-6
    • Steps 7-8
    • Community evaluation step-by-step
  • Tool 4: Scenario-based Planning
    • What is scenario-based planning?
    • Scenario-based planning step-by-step
    • Visioning
    • Pathways
• Final Remarks
• Acknowledgements
• Additional Resources
• PDF Version

An indicator provides relevant and measurable information about a situation or a trend. It is a clue to a more complex reality. An indicator can be expressed as a number, for instance, kilometres of paved road in the municipality or the percentage of community members who attend a meeting. An indicator can also express the quality of something based on opinions and perceptions, for example, whether people think transportation is getting easier or more difficult, or if the schools are providing better education.

In the example of the child’s weight (Box 6), the monitoring question is ‘Is the child healthy?’ In order to answer that question, we chose an indicator, i.e. the child’s weight. Weight is not the same as health, but knowing if a child has a normal weight, or whether her weight is increasing normally will tell us a little bit about her health. For instance, a child who is losing weight may be sick, in which case the weight loss is a side-effect of illness. The child might be losing weight because of lack of nourishment; in this case the weight loss both indicates a lack of food and represents a health problem. It is also possible to pick an indicator that expresses an opinion; for instance, asking a health professional to make a judgment about the child’s health. This would provide more information to complement the weight indicator.

© 2007 Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)
Contributors and copyright information