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 to a potential indicator.
Observing bike helmets might be a pointer to bike accident rates with head
injury or rates of unintended injury for children and youth.
Full Answer
(1)
The principle function of developing or articulating an experiential version
of a result is as a set of pointers to potential indicators. So ask the group,
“How would you experience healthychildren
in your day to day lives? What would you see hear feel observe as you walked
around the community?”
(2) Identifying experience is a first step in
identifying indicators, but it has a value above and beyond this function.
(a)
Experience of a result is another way to ground the result (and the idea of
results) in everyday experience. It is another way to connect with the
partners who are parents, youth, businesspeople, faith community members and
others who are put off by jargon and exclusionary language.
(b) Experiential
versions of a result can actually be used to steer the planning process in the
absense of good data, or while data is being developed. (LINK TO PATHWAYS
DISCUSSION)
(3) TECHNIQUE:Brainstorm a list of
experiences for each indicator. As you do this, it is quite common for members
of the group to offer up ideas that come later in the framework. Most common
among these are actual indicators themselves or what works ideas. For example
if you are leading a process to generate a list of experiences for “Children
Ready for school” you might get:
I would see children playing well on the playground (experience)
The young children I meet would know their ABC’s (experience)
The percent of children promoted from kindergarten to first grade
(indicator)
Every child who needs child care would get it. (what works strategy)
It is important for the leader
of this process to be able to identify when the suggested item is off task.
But it is also important to deal with this in a respectful way that helps
reinforce peoples knowledge of the thinking process (“That’s a great idea,
but it’s a suggestion about what works and we’ll get to that in this part
of the process – refer to the schematic). It is also important not to lose
the idea. One way to do this is to have blank flipchart paper on the wall for
indicators, story behind the curve, partners, and what works, so that ideas
that come up at any time during the work session can be captured in the right
place.
