Blog Post
Why harmonise indicators?
published 8 July 2013
published 8 July 2013
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation supports the use of data collected by implementation projects to compare the effectiveness of similar health innovations across different projects and countries. To do this, the data must be based on results from the same survey questions and response categories. However, projects designed to enhance the same life-saving intervention, such as thermal newborn care, measure their achievements using slightly different survey instruments, so their data are not comparable.
To see what data can be compared, IDEAS was asked by the foundation to identify indicators which projects have in common in their existing data sets. In addition, we proposed a set of questions and response categories for projects to use in future surveys, so the effectiveness of innovations can be compared.
Implementation projects shared their survey instruments with IDEAS and their maternal and newborn health-related questions were mapped onto an excel spreadsheet identifying commonality and differences between indicators. The timing of up-coming surveys was also mapped and each project was contacted in advance with the proposed set of questions and response categories, and asked to include these in their surveys.
IDEAS created a clear excel spreadsheet table of indicators that can be harmonised across all maternal and newborn health implementation projects funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Ethiopia, North-Eastern Nigeria and Uttar Pradesh, India.