Measuring and Improving Social Impacts

8Measurement Approaches

It is easy to become confident of program success even before any research on measurement begins. Day-to-day involvement and observations of activities in the field—seeing patients being vaccinated, full recycling bins, or a well-executed opera—can make it appear that the project is effective. Decision makers evaluate success, and they modify programs based on these evaluations. They often believe that success is so obvious that devoting resources to measurement to prove success to an outside funder or other stakeholder would be a waste of resources. But it’s hard to write a success story if the program actually fails.

The Social Impact Creation Cycle outlines the steps to take to create social impact. In this chapter, ...