Evaluation Indicators
This toolkit uses the term ‘impact’ to refer to ‘any change made to a situation or context.’ (This definition of impact is different from how other more common monitoring and evaluation practices may define the term.)
Assessing impact therefore means documenting what has changed, as well as all those factors that have contributed to achieving that change. (See Impact Statement)
This includes capturing intended and unintended, planned and unplanned impacts — both positive and negative. Capturing both positive and negative impacts can help your initiative improve throughout its progress, be accountable to community members, partners and stakeholders, know if you have met your initiative’s impact and learn for subsequent initiatives.
The toolkit helps you capture and analyse both short-term impacts (also known as process indicators or ‘output’ indicators) and longer-term impacts (also known as ‘outcome’ indicators).
- Short-term impacts could include informing new audiences about an issue through screenings, building the capacities of social movements through training, or mobilising target audiences to take action (such as attending a rally or signing a petition).
- Longer-term impacts, such as changing social attitudes or changing public policy or law, require multiple efforts over time by many different actors and stakeholders.
Below, there are suggested evaluation indicators for each stage of your Video for Change initiative. Most of the indicators are short-term and measure outputs, but we have also included indicators that may help you assess longer-term effects and outcomes of your initiative.
Documenting these as they happen will make it easier for you to measure your impact, and you should modify these based on your own objectives.
For each of the following sections, we recommend you use your Impact Statement as your baseline for assessing what has happened and what has changed. Please note: we have included a basic set of evaluation indicators. If you wish to undertake a more comprehensive evaluation and can afford it, you may want to engage a monitoring and evaluation professional.