Results: represent more than quantitative data

This suggestion addresses Principle 1 from a consultation driven by Monitoring and Evaluation experts from UK CSOs Jan – Mar 2017 – (per Results: discussion space and TAG 2016/17 path ) - see attached document Results_representMoreThanQuantitativeDataFORMATTINGUPDATED.docx (16.6 KB)

  1. Add a “qualitative” code to the IndicatorMeasure Codelist

I would call this code “ordinal” since you are expressing a result in qualitative terms like “1 - bad”, “2 - fair”, “3 - good”. I.m.o. an at least ordinal (expert opinion) is always possible.

  1. Make the value attribute optional for
    i. result/indicator/baseline
    ii. result/indicator/period/target
    iii. result/indicator/period/actual
    to allow:
    i. qualitative results to be expressed in narrative only

For the reason mentioned above, this is i.m.o. not a good reason to make values optional.

ii. distinction between an value of zero versus no value recorded >>>(alternative: use xsi:nil but this may cause complications for csv based >>>tools that do not have the same capability)

I would prefer an explicit ‘missing value’’ indicator. A technical limitation of CSV files should exclude the possibility to explicitly specify an missing value.

  1. In order to link documents
    • Preferred suggestion:
    To be consistent with iati-activity/location element (where location is >>> defined once and referenced in results) add document-link (0…) to:
    i. result/indicator/baseline
    ii. result/indicator/period/target
    iii. result/indicator/period/actual
    with:
    i. ref attribute to link to iati-activity/document-link
    ii. optional free-text to describe how the document is relevant to the >>>results or indicator
    iii. sub-ref element (0…
    ) to allow free-text reference to a particular >>>area/section/graph/table etc. of a document acknowledging that often >>>only part(s) of a document will be relevant to a given result or indicator.
    and add ref attribute to iati-activity/document-link
    • Alternative suggestion a:
    add document-link element (0…*) (per iati-activity/document-link) to:
    i. result/indicator/baseline
    ii. result/indicator/period/target
    iii. result/indicator/period/actual
    • Alternative suggestion b: (If modification >>>Results: use of narrative elements is >>>not accepted (i.e. use narrative type attribute))
    Any document URLs to be included directly as part of existing narrative >>>elements.

Including link to google doc version of proposal document per @Herman’s suggestion with indication of the minimum suggestions raised at the technical standards day of the IATI TAG 2017. Please use this google doc instead of the word document: Results: represent more than quantitative data

Comments added in document.