Facts In Action

Making it Count is a series of articles designed to help you develop ways to measure outcomes in your program or family child care home. If you would like to receive earlier issues of Making it Count, please contact Erika Argersinger at (617) 695-0700 x271, or by email at eargersinger@associatedearlycareandeducation.org. You can also find earlier issues on-line at factsinaction.org/mcount/making-it-count.htm.

In the last issue of Facts in Action, we described some of the steps you can take to define a set of outcomes for your program to measure. Defining a set of outcomes is a very important step in developing an outcome measurement system because it creates a foundation for all subsequent planning and implementation activities.

As we've stated in previous articles, outcomes are changes or benefits children experience as a result of being in your care or your program. Once you have decided what changes or benefits you would like to measure, the next step is to determine what information (indicators) you will need to measure your program's achievement.

The purpose of an indicator is to help you know whether an outcome has been achieved. Outcome indicators must be observable and measurable to be useful (it is helpful to think of indicators in mathematical concepts such as numbers and percentages). For example, if your outcome statement is, "Children experience stable, ongoing relationships with providers," an indicator of the stability of relationships could be the number and percentage of providers who leave your program each quarter and annually.

After the working group has identified which outcomes to measure (described in Facts in Action, May and August 2000), the next task for the group is to specify one or more indicators for each outcome by identifying the specific, observable accomplishments or changes that will tell you whether each outcome has been achieved.

Specifying an outcome indicator requires deciding:

• which specific, observable, measurable characteristic or change will represent achievement of the outcome; and

• which specific statistic (number or percentage) you will calculate to summarize the level of outcome achievement.

Once you have defined a set of outcomes for your program to measure and have identified indicators for each of these outcomes, the next step for the working group is to determine how your program will collect the information (data). The next issue of Making it Count will discuss identifying data sources and data collection methods.

Sources:
Measuring Program Outcomes: A Practical Approach, United Way of America, 1996; Outcome Measurement in Child Care Programs: A Workbook for Practitioners, United Way of Massachusetts Bay, 2000.

See also — Minnesota Department of Children, Families and Learning (www.factsinaction.org /mcount/mcnov002.htm)

Facts in Action, November 2000