When evaluating a project, program, or policy, measures, indicators, or metrics are tools that help describe what’s happening—implementation, results, and outcomes. They turn ideas into observable, quantifiable signals you can track over time.
What Do These Terms Mean? #
- An indicator (or metric, measure) is something you select that provides evidence about progress—e.g. number of people served, rate of adoption, or change in behavior.
- A target or benchmark is a value you hope to reach by a certain time.
- An index is a set of related indicators allowing comparisons across programs or regions.
- A standard is a broader set of indicators, benchmarks or indices that tell you what good or acceptable performance looks like.
Using Existing Indicators vs Creating New Ones #
Using existing indicators can save time, offer robust, comparable data, and help align with others’ findings, if the indicators are appropriate for your context. When they aren’t suitable, you might need to develop new ones but doing this well takes work.
What Makes a Good Indicator? #
Some of the qualities to look for include:
- Validity: It actually measures what it’s supposed to.
- Reliability: Consistent when measured by different people or at different times.
- Feasibility & Cost: Can you collect the data? Can you do it right? Without exhausting resources.
- Clarity: Clear definition, good guidance so everyone understands what is being measured and how.
- Disaggregation: Able to break down data by gender, age, location etc., so you see whether improvements reach all groups.
Advantages & Trade-Offs #
Advantages:
- Provides concrete evidence of what’s changing.
- Helps monitor performance, make mid-course corrections.
- Supports accountability and comparison.
Trade-Offs / Constraints:
- Sometimes data needed for ideal indicators either doesn’t exist or is costly to collect.
- Indicators simplify reality—they offer partial views and may miss nuance but they usually need to be paired with more qualitative information.
- There’s always a balance: choosing how many indicators to use vs. the effort to collect and analyse them. Too many can be overwhelming. Too few risk missing important things.
Using good measures, indicators or metrics is about selecting the right signs to track progress, deciding whether existing ones work or you need new ones, and balancing precision, cost, and usefulness so that the evaluation tells a clear and fair story.
List of recommended resources #
For a broad overview #
KPIs: What Are Key Performance Indicators? Types and Examples
This article by Alexandra Twin for Investopedia gives a brief about Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), that is, measurements used for assessing a company’s long-term performance. The article talks about why KPIs matter and how to set KPIs for an organization.
What are Measures, Metrics and KPIs? What’s the Difference? (Definitions)
This video tutorial by Tracey Smith from The Voice of Practical Analytics gives an overview of the difference between a measure, a metric, and a KPI.
For in-depth understanding #
Measure, metric, and indicator: An Object-Oriented approach for consistent terminology
This paper by Putnam P. Texel proposes an approach to provide consistency in examining the terms measure, metrics, and indicator from an Object-Oriented perspective. A Unified Modeling Language (UML) class diagram is provided by Texel to represent clarification of the concepts of measure, metric, and indicator as well as the relationship between the three concepts.
Measures, Metrics, and Indicators for Evaluating Technology-Based Interventions
This article by Eva L. Baker and Harold F. O’Neil explores the different types of dependent variables used in evaluating technology-based learning programs. It emphasizes the importance of selecting appropriate measures, metrics, and indicators to effectively assess the impact and outcomes of such educational technologies and interventions.
Case study #
Measuring Social Sustainability: A Multidimensional Approach
This study by Paola Ballon and Jose Cuesta proposes an original measure of social sustainability and its associated fragilities in the form of multidimensional social gaps. The measure is anchored conceptually in the new social sustainability in development framework and applied empirically using a counting approach. The study calls this metric the Social Sustainability Index.
This paper aims to introduce the metric Learning Poverty, developed by the World Bank and UNESCO Institute for Statistics to measure and track children’s foundational learning levels. The indicator highlights that before COVID-19, 53% of children in low- and middle-income countries could not read with comprehension by age 10, and projections showed only a modest improvement to 44% by 2030—far below the Sustainable Development Goal of universal literacy.
References #
KPIs vs Metrics – Tips & Tricks to Performance Measures
