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Tips for developing

indicators for Inclusive
Monitoring & Evaluation
Naomi Falkenburg
MEAL Specialist, DevLearn
Education Partner - ActivityInfo

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What do indicators tell us?

Making sure different groups are reflected in our

indicators lets us measure and evaluate results accurately
and make a course correction during the project if our
monitoring data shows us this is necessary.

Formulating relevant indicators is therefore a

precondition for mainstreaming inclusion in M&E. There
are several ways to do this, depending on the aims of our
intervention.

Let’s take a look at some different kinds of indicators and

how we can approach them.

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01 Consider person-related and
non-person-related indicators

Result indicators that measure intended changes among people

(individuals, households, communities, or societies) can be
differentiated according to different groups of beneficiaries to
monitor whether this change is the same.

E.g. An indicator that differentiates between ‘refugees living in a

camp setting’ as compared to ‘refugees living in urban housing’.

Neutral indicators, which are neither differentiated nor specific, are

appropriate in cases where having a certain status or identity is not
relevant to the changes being observed.

E.g. If the indicator is ‘all health advisors acquire knowledge about

ethical standards of care for persons with disabilities’, it does not
matter whether the health advisors themselves have disabilities or
not.

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01 Consider person-related and
non-person-related indicators

Indicators for intended changes that are not measured in relation

to people, but have an impact on people’s inclusion in the project’s
environment, can also reflect the degree to which an intervention
is inclusive in its aims.

These could include changes in institutional performance

(outcome level) or the availability of a new product or service
(output level).

E.g. Imagine a project that supports a ministry in designing and

implementing a policy. Even if the policy is not primarily focused
on gender, you could have a gender-inclusive outcome indicator
such as ‘every year, the ministry publishes gender-differentiated
statements on the results of the policy’.

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02 Combining quantitative and qualitative
indicators

Both quantitative and qualitative indicators are important.

Quantitative measures alone cannot capture inherently qualitative
concepts, such as ‘empowerment’ or ‘gender equality’.

E.g. You use ‘female-to-male ratio’ as an indicator for a capacity-

building course. Even if you find that the course had a high rate of
women participating, this does not tell you whether women and
men equally benefited from it.

To better understand the actual impact of the training, you would

have to ask questions such as ‘Was the training content relevant to
both men and women?’ or ‘Did participating in the training produce
equally positive results for both?’. In other words, equal participation
may be necessary for gender equality, but it is not sufficient by itself.

Useful indicators for inclusion will focus on the substance and the
quality of results, and define specific criteria for what constitutes
each in the context of the project.

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03 Using indicators to set inclusion targets

We can use indicators proactively to keep ourselves

accountable if we have made a commitment to inclusion.

Output indicators are often used to monitor quality and

participation, which are both important aspects of inclusion
within a project. We can set targets or quotas for inclusion at
the output level accordingly:

E.g. Setting a target for a certain level of participation of a

particular group in our activities, or satisfaction among
beneficiaries. In terms of accountability, input-level
indicators can also give us important clues about whether
an organization backs up its commitment to inclusion by
actually investing human and financial resources.

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 DO YOU WANT TO LEARN
MORE ABOUT INCLUSIVE
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EVALUATION?

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Naomi Falkenburg
MEAL Specialist, DevLearn
Education Partner - ActivityInfo

www.activityinfo.org