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T9 Further Guidance on Indicator Selection
T9.1 Introduction
Indicators are important and can be used throughout the full spectrum of project management for
planning, implementation, monitoring, reporting and managing. Most importantly, indicators are
tools for measuring a project’s progress and achievements in realizing project outputs, outcomes
and impacts. Indicators provide a simple and reliable means to measure progress and achievements,
thus ensuring legitimacy and accountability to all stakeholders. But remember, indicators only
indicate; they do not explain.
What type of indicator is best? The choice makes a difference. Validity, accuracy, sensitivity,
transparency/plausibility and cost-effectiveness are all important considerations when defining or
selecting indicators. Some general guidelines on indicator selection include:
Avoid reinventing the wheel. Considerable efforts to formulate indicators have been undertaken in
a number of relevant contexts, such as the UN Millennium Development Goals, Performance
Indicators of the Global Environment Facility (GEF, 2000), work in poverty alleviation, economic
development, governance, forest management and other sectors that address social well-being,
such as poverty reduction, health and education. Some indicator lists have been included in Section
T10 Social Indicator Checklists.
Keep it simple. Each indicator should convey a single meaningful message or information. The
indicator should be easy to detect, record and interpret; in other words, indicators should be
unambiguous. Indicators that are easy to detect, record and interpret contribute significantly toward
the goal of cost-effectiveness. The process of defining indicators itself can help project proponents
and stakeholders in clarifying the outcomes being sought. If it proves difficult to identify an outcome
indicator, it usually reflects a lack of clarity in conceiving the outcome, or the excessively broad or
ambitious nature of the outcome sought.
More is not better. The key to good indicators is credibility. A larger number of indicators tends to
make things more confusing, generate a lot of not-so-necessary data, and increases the cost of
monitoring change. Indicators should be used to provide approximate answers to a few important
questions rather than seek to provide exact answers to many less important questions. Given that
resources for monitoring are limited, choosing the right set of indicators is very important. One or
two clearly articulated indicators that measure the link between the activity and the output or the
output and outcome are sufficient. As one moves upward (toward the overall social objective or
impact) in the conceptual model, the number of indicators linked to each element tends to diminish.
Check for objectivity. The validity of an indicator is related to its reliability in measuring what it is
designed to measure in a replicable way. In other words, when reapplying the same assessment
procedure to the same conditions, the same answer should result (CIFOR 2001). The literature often
refers to the need for ‘objectively verifiable indicators’ (OVI).
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