intelligent measurement

There is an interesting debate on measuring relationships going on Don Bartholomew’s Metricsman blog - Don is saying that he thinks relationship measurement will not be the “next big thing” in measurement - and there are some interesting comments by K D Paine, M Weiner and J Grunig - all well known in this area. 

I think it’s interesting to note that the financial world is advocating the measurement of relationships (an “intangible asset” as they call it) and would like to see this included in future company reporting as I’ve written about before.  “Next big thing” or not - relationship measurement will grow in importance - in my humble opinion.

Glenn

I recently came across a short article in a London newspaper which I summarise as following:

On Friday 21 September, Jose Mourinho, coach of the UK Chelsea football team resigned. On this day, a jump was seen in the number of people visiting a certain job vacancies website. It was proposed by the website marketing team that this jump was due to people learning of Mr Mourinho’s resignation and prompting them to think about changing careers and looking for a new opportunity - thus the rise in number of visits to the job vacancies website.

Doesn’t that strike you as a slightly spurious claim of cause and effect? They appear to be connecting the unrelated and proposing a series of changes that seem slightly unlikely: 1) a change to knowledge (knowing that Chelsea’s coach resigns) to 2) change to attitude (I should change jobs) to 3) behaviour (I actively look for a new job). Possibly of even more concern is that there are no alternative explanations offered as to the jump in website visitors. We can imagine several alternative explanations:

-   On Fridays there is always a jump in website visitors (like patterns often seen in purchasing or visits to museums).

- A publicity campaign, a change is site referencing or link campaign drove more visitors to the website on that day.

- Or the more mundane, a technician installed a new monitoring software on the website that led to a more accurate or inaccurate reporting of website visitors.

In addition, no comparison was given to traffic on other job vacancies websites or even global statistics of web traffic (perhaps all sites experienced a jump on 21 September?) 

Thinking it through, I think it’s safe to say that there is not enough evidence to point to an association between the resignation of Chelsea’s coach and the jump in visitors to a job vacancies website. The cause (resignation) does seem very distant from the effect (people seek to change jobs). We can point to other cases where an association does seem to exist between a public event and a particular change in behaviour as I’ve written about before: the effect of a reality TV program on the number of people willing to donate an organ and the effect of Kylie Minogue’s treatment for breast cancer on the number of young women taking a scan appointment. In both cases, an association between the cause and effect could be demonstrated and alternative causes were ruled out.

Glenn

It is often difficult to get organisations away from simply measuring “outputs” - what is produced - to measuring “outcomes” - what are the effects of outputs.

Funny enough, many organisations want to go from the very superficial measuring of output (e.g. how many news articles did we generate) to the very in-depth measuring of impact (e.g. the long term effect of our media visibility on audiences). Impact is feasible but difficult to measure, as I’ve written about before. However, instead of focusing on the two ends of the measurement scale, organisations would perhaps be wise to focus on “outcome” measurement.

I think this quote from a UN Development Programme Evaluation Manual (pdf) sums up why outcome is an appropriate level to measure for most organisations:

“Today, the focus of UNDP evaluations is on outcomes, because this level of results reveals more about how effective UNDP’s actions are in achieving real development changes. A focus on outcomes also promises a shorter timeframe and more credible linkages between UNDP action and an eventual effect than does a focus on the level of overall improvement in people’s lives, which represent much longer-term and diffuse impacts .”

The notion of the shorter timeframe and more credible linkages is certainly appealing for many organisations considering their focus of evaluation.

Glenn

As I mentioned in an earlier post, people often confuse “impact” with “results”. Is it possible to measure “long term impact” of projects? It is, however for most projects it is unrealistic to do so for two reasons: time and cost.

To evaluate impact, you would usually need to wait some 12 months after the major elements of a project have been implemented. Many organisations cannot simply wait that long. In term of costs, an impact study requires a triangulation methodology that uses various quantitative and qualitative research methods which could be costly. However, if time and cost are not issues, an impact evaluation is possible, keeping in mind the following points:

Was the impact desired defined at the beginning of the project?

 For example, greater organisation efficiency; change in the way a target audience and/or an organisation behaves; or improvements in how services for a given audience are managed?

What have been the other elements influencing the impact you want to measure?

Your project cannot be viewed in isolation; there must have been other factors influencing the changes being observed. Identifying these factors will help you to assess the level of influence of your project compared to other factors.

Do you have a mandate to measure impact?

When assessing impact, you will be looking at long term effects that probably go outside of your own responsibilities and into the realms of other projects and units - you are looking at an area of the wider effects of your organisation’s activities and this needs to be taken into consideration. For example, if you are looking at the longer term effects of a training program, you would want to look at how individuals and the organisation as a whole are more efficent as a result of the training. Do you have the political mandate to do so? - As you may discover effects that go way beyond your own responsibilities.

Evaluating impact is a daunting but not impossible task. For most projects, it would be more realistic to focus on measuring outputs and preferably outcomes - and think of short term outcomes as I have written about previously.

Glenn

When speaking of achieving objectives for a project, I’ve heard a lot of people speak of the “intended impact” and I’ve read quite some “impact reports”. I know it’s a question of language, but often people use the word “impact” when in fact they should use the word “results”. Impact in the evaluation field has a specific application to long term effects of a project. The DAC Glossary of Key Terms in Evaluation and Results Based Management (pdf) produced by the OECD contains the most widely accepted definitions in this field. Impact is defined as:

“Positive and negative, primary and secondary long-term effects produced by a development intervention, directly or indirectly, intended or unintended”.

And “results” is defined as

“The output, outcome or impact (intended or unintended, positive and/or negative) of a development intervention”.

Consequently  I believe that when we produce a report that shows media visibility generated by a project, this is a short term output and should be called “results” rather than “impact” which applies to more long-term effects.

Glenn