he Short Answer 1. Populations and subpopulations can be defined by geography or by both characteristic and geography. 2. Examples of populations include: all children in the county, all children 0 to 5 in the county, all children 0 to 5 in the Fairfield neighborhood of the county; all elders in the state, all elders [...]
The Short Answer 1. Results are plain language conditions of well-being for children, adults, families, and communities. 2. Choosing results is a political process more than a technical process. You are looking for a set of statements that are understandable to the public, say something important about the well-being of a given population, and are [...]
The Short Answer 1. Ask people how they experience the results (e.g. healthy and safe children) in their every day lives. What do we see, hear, feel? For example, for safe children, we might observe children wearing bike helmets. 2. Experience" is the bridge between plain language results and indicators. Each experience is a pointer [...]
The Short Answer 1. Start by assessing the result in terms of everyday experience, what we see hear, or feel about children ready for school or stable families. 2. Brainstorm a list of candidate indicators. Each entry is a data statement, e.g. % of children reading at grade level, rate of foster children per 100,000. [...]
The Short Answer 1. Look at what others have done. There are many websites with report cards and data sources that others have used. (See tools.) 2. Get your partners to help access what now is produced. Sometimes the best data on child and family well-being comes from the public health and education systems. State [...]
The Short Answer 1. Use the results and the experiential version of results to drive the process. Instead of asking "How are we doing on the baseline?" we ask "How are we doing producing the result we want?" How prevalent are the experiences which tell us about this result?" "Are things getting better or worse? [...]
The Short Answer 1. Gain organizational and political sponsorship, necessary to produce the document and give it standing in the decision making process. 2. Identify results and indicators, using a broad process to involve partners, and grounded in a conceptually clear framework. See 2.5 and 2.6, and 2.7. 3. Gather the data, starting with the best available and pursuing [...]
Check out the new illustrated version of this page here! The Short Answer 1. Baselines have two parts: an historical part which shows where we've been, and a forecast part that shows where we are headed if we stay on our current course. 2. The historical part should have as much data as you can [...]
The Short Answer 1. Look at the research, but don't be limited by research. Find out what has worked in other places to turn the curves you are working on. But research will never give us all, or even most, of the answers. Use your common sense and knowledge of your community to decide what [...]
The Short Answer 1. An action plan describes who will do what, when and how. Action plans are developed after your strategy is developed. For each element of a strategy, identify tasks down the left column. Across the top, identify who is responsible for completing the task, and beginning and ending dates. Add a column [...]
