Name and definition
Every indicator has a plain name. This is what you see in Analyse and in a report. Every indicator also has a concept definition. This is a precise, citable description of what the indicator measures. The definition lets you check that a suggested indicator actually matches your outcome before you accept it. Read the definition against the outcome in your Theory of Change, not just the indicator’s name. Two indicators can share a similar name but measure meaningfully different things.Direction: which way is “good”
An indicator’s direction says which end of its scale counts as the good outcome. For most indicators, a higher score is better; for some (time spent waiting, incidents reported), a lower score is. Direction only changes how a result is read and coloured. It never changes the underlying number, so getting it right matters for how a chart or gauge is interpreted, not for the calculation itself.Quantitative vs. qualitative
An indicator is either:- Quantitative: it produces a number: a score, a percentage, a count. This is what powers gauges, bar charts, and the indicator scores you see in Analyse.
- Qualitative: it has no numeric calculation. Its questions are open-ended, and the answers surface as grouped themes with representative quotes instead of a score.
Single-question vs. multi-question
An indicator is scored one of two ways:- A single question, run through a named method. A well-known scoring approach like Net Promoter Score or a customer-satisfaction score, applied to one question’s answers.
- Several questions, combined into one score. Multiple inputs feed a formula that produces a single number.