Innovation Advisory · Framework 02
The Measurement
Checklist
Twelve questions to ask before you commission, design, or fund a piece of MEL work. Print it. Pin it above the desk. Come back to it when the proposal lands.
Whose question is this?
A question written inside the funder's building will produce answers the funder already suspected. Go find the practitioner who is actually bumping into the problem, and start the design there.
What would count as an answer?
Write the sentence you hope to be able to say at the end of the study before you pick the method. If the method is the wrong shape for that sentence, change the method.
Is the indicator easy to count, or worth knowing?
These are rarely the same thing. A lot of good MEL work is just refusing the first proposed indicator and making the case for a better one.
Who pays the cost of being measured?
The respondents pay it. Ask whether the information you want is worth the hour you are taking from a woman who has no hour to spare.
Does the sampling frame flinch?
If everyone in your sample agreed to be sampled, the sample is polite. The farmer with the most grievances is usually the one with the fewest ways to be heard. Build a frame that can find her, or admit the frame is doing half the job.
What does the baseline already know that you do not?
Most baselines confirm what the community already knew. Spend some of the baseline budget on listening to them properly, before you measure anything.
Is the control group ethical?
Ethics in practice, not ethics in review. If the intervention is the difference between a meal and no meal, the control group is a group of people you have agreed to observe while they go hungry.
Will the report be readable on a Tuesday afternoon?
By a programme officer who is tired, with seventeen other reports open on her desk. Write it for her from the first draft, not the last.
What would change your mind?
Name it now, before the data arrives. If nothing would change your mind, the decision is already made and you are just dressing it up for the signature page.
Who will act on this report?
If nobody will act on it, the report is expensive paper. The time to commission the action is before the measurement, not after it.
What do you refuse to count?
Every measurement design has blind spots. Write yours down on the first page. Then decide whether you are willing to sign off on them in public.
Is this helping anyone, or is it helping the project look like it is helping?
Ask this one three times — at the proposal, at the analysis, and once more before the final report is signed. It should feel awkward every time.