tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5138475034562973576.post8407469608559599882..comments2023-08-27T16:38:43.365+02:00Comments on Wikiprogress ProgBlog: Just one indicator please!ProgBlog moderatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15192525217343558645noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5138475034562973576.post-81607617585198091332010-03-19T17:21:42.474+01:002010-03-19T17:21:42.474+01:00Interesting! What about Infant Mortality Rate amon...Interesting! What about Infant Mortality Rate among the lowest socioeconomic quintile? Or, even better -probably - the ratio between first and fifth quintile Infant Mortality Rate? That would give us a lot of information about the quality of life and equity of that particular society and I think data is already available or, at least, rather easy to obtain.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00124090122851469002noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5138475034562973576.post-76893368265504957852010-03-13T13:50:38.038+01:002010-03-13T13:50:38.038+01:00Nice post Dominic. A few years ago I was involved ...Nice post Dominic. A few years ago I was involved in some work in Australia looking at an indicator there that was hitting the headlines " Number of children in jobless families". The numbers were suprisingly high and there was a good deal of concern. But when we started to think about this, we asked "hang on .. what exactly is this indicator supposed to be telling us? B ecause at first glance it seems to be suggesting that these kids are in poverty (in which caase why don't we measure that directly) and also that they don't have any working adult role model in their lives (in which case why not measure that directly)." Because think about it... neither is true. There are kids in jobless families, who may live in a house where another adult is working... so they might well have a working role model. And there are families who might be jobless but also well off (kids living with relatively wealthy retired parents or grandparents etc). Then of course there are people every month - short term contractors say - who are unemployed only briefly (and at the time of the labour force survey) and who are not necessarily poor. Anyway, the long and the short of it was that once we disentangled the data and became clearer about the problem we were trying to measure, the story was rather different. <br /><br />So its not easy I agree. It is very important to measure a genuine problem (measure an outcome), rather than pick an indicator that seems to suggest a problem.<br /><br />JonJon Hallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12649347902950691392noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5138475034562973576.post-79453579292187106732010-03-13T13:46:37.117+01:002010-03-13T13:46:37.117+01:00This comment has been removed by the author.Jon Hallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12649347902950691392noreply@blogger.com