Multiple result indicator baseline elements (v. 2.03)

#1

Hey guys,

I have a question. According to the documentation for Result indicator baseline element, this ‘baseline’ element can now be reported multiple times in IATI v. 2.03:

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Although there is no example in the documentation and in the discussion links (provided in the documentation) I can not find anything saying that this element can now be reported multiple times. Could anyone please confirm this ?

thanks!!

#2

Hi @Eimis,

So, this update was to allow for something like this:

<baseline year="2012" iso-date="2012-01-01" value="10">
  <dimension name="sex" value="female" />
  <dimension name="age" value="adult" />
</baseline>

<baseline year="2012" iso-date="2012-01-01" value="20">
  <dimension name="sex" value="male" />
  <dimension name="age" value="adult" />
</baseline>

I.e. multiple baselines for different disaggregations (expressed via the dimension element). That’s explained in @mikesmith’s v2.03 proposal linked in the documentation.

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#3

Thanks again for your help Andy… :slight_smile: Sooo it’s this small line, right ? Kinda difficult so spot it…

b. Change baseline cardinality from 0…1 to 0…* to permit disaggregations (per proposal Results – allow disaggregations of results data (included 2.03) )

Also, don’t you think that an example in the official documentation page for this element should include multiple Baseline element’s ? It was changed in 2.03 after all. I’m surprised that it is not there. cc: @amys

#4

Hi @Eimis

The 2.03 reference page includes:

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This should not be difficult to spot on the page. Users don’t need to look at the 2.03 upgrade discussions.

The example documentation doesn’t repeat elements unnecessarily. This is true throughout the standard.

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#5

Hey @amys,

thanks for your message. Well, in my opinion if it was changed in a specific IATI version, it would be really helpful to have an example in the documentation of the change that was made. I’m a technical person and I still find it really difficult to understand the language used in the documentation and without proper examples it’s even more difficult. I honestly don’t think that this is “unnecessarily repeating elements” :slight_smile: Just some honest feedback from my side. But thanks again for your help! It’s much more clear now.

#6

Thank you for the feedback. It is useful to hear. We’ll make a note of it.

#7

True… But I don’t think it would be unnecessary here. Here’s an example of a repeated element in the docs:

<title>
    <narrative>Activity title</narrative>
    <narrative xml:lang="fr">Titre de l'activité</narrative>
    <narrative xml:lang="es">Título de la actividad</narrative>
</title>

^^ This involves repetition of the narrative element. It’s super helpful, as it demonstrates why you’d use more than one narrative element.

Same for description, and for participating-org, and activity-date… There’s quite a lot of useful repetition in the example usage sections.

Intuitively, I’d only expect to find one baseline per result. It wasn’t immediately obvious to me why there’d be more than one. It’s because of disaggregations, and an example could help make this clear without having to read the original proposal.

I don’t think it’s easy to make sense of the results element from the documentation as it stands. If someone thinks it’s obvious, there’s a decent chance they’ve not understood it :wink:

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