Guide to measuring soft outcomes and distance travelled. Analyzing Outcome Information: Getting the Most from Data. The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy of public consideration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders. Note: This report is available in its entirety in the Portable Document Format (PDF). Preface Raw data that nonprofit organizations obtain from their outcome monitoring procedures, no matter how good, need to be processed and analyzed before the information can be useful to managers and staff. This guide is unique in offering suggestions to nonprofits for analyzing regularly collected outcome data. Probably the major concern, for at least some small organizations, is the computer capacity needed to tabulate the numbers that would otherwise be done manually. This guide does not deal with the more complex analysis procedures that involve sophisticated statistical or mathematical knowledge.
Gordon W. Introduction Who Should Perform the Analysis. SMART outcomes. You must express your outcomes in ‘Smart’ terms. ‘Smart’ is an acronym that you may be more familiar with in terms of setting targets. We use it here to remind you to make your outcomes: Specific. The way you express your outcome must target the issue you are concerned with precisely. For example, if you are concerned with the health of a particular section of society, make that clear in the way you write the outcome.Measurable. Notes Note: For example, New Philanthropy Capital (a research charity) has developed a questionnaire to measure seven aspects of children’s subjective well-being including self esteem, resilience and relationships – Taxonomy of Outcomes. Outcome Indicators Project.