Somebody asked last week why I am writing a book about measurement, and not something more cheerful. The plain answer is that twenty years in development research has meant watching the same failure mode produce the same report, again and again.
Here is the failure. A programme is designed. The programme gets an indicator. The indicator was built when the programme was built. Over a couple of years, the programme adapts to the indicator — the metric becomes the target, which is an old observation with many fathers. The indicator stops tracking what the programme was meant to do. The evaluation happens anyway. The report is written. The report says the programme worked.
I have written that report. I have read a lot of that report. I have lost friends over that report.
The Measurement Trap is trying to make the trap itself more legible. The trap is the moment when the indicator becomes the thing you are managing, and the original question quietly disappears from the table. The book’s real subject is politics: who decides what to count, and what gets left off the list. Statistics are the mechanism. The argument is about care, doubt, and the public list of what is being left out.
More soon.