• Home
• Site Map
• Foreword
  • Foreword
  • Contributors & Copyright
• Introduction
  • Introduction
  • Methods
  • Sites
    • Why Pando and East Kalimantan?
    • Municipal Governments and Decentralisation in Bolivia
    • Municipal Governments and Decentralisation in Indonesia
• Part I. Concepts
  • Wellbeing and Poverty
    • Poverty is More Than Low Income
    • Poverty is a Lack of Wellbeing
    • Poverty and Wellbeing Have Many Dimensions
    • Further Reading
  • Local Governments and Poverty
    • How can Local Governments Reduce Poverty?
    • Four Steps to Improve Local Governmental Action
    • Further Reading
  • Forests and Poverty
    • How do Forests Influence Poverty?
    • What is Poverty in Forest Communities?
    • Are Forests Safety Nets, Poverty Traps or Escape Routes?
    • Further Reading
• Part II. Tools
  • Monitoring
    • What is monitoring?
    • Types of Monitoring
    • Indicators
    • When to monitor?
    • Who conducts monitoring?
    • Linking monitoring to planning
  • Participatory Planning
    • What is participatory planning?
    • Why is participatory planning useful?
    • When and where is participatory planning done?
    • Who should participate?
  • Tool 1: Interactive Mapping
    • What is interactive mapping?
    • Interactive mapping step-by-step
    • Use interactive mapping for monitoring
  • Tool 2: Wellbeing Monitoring
    • What is a local wellbeing monitoring system?
    • Wellbeing monitoring step-by-step
    • Step 1: Define purpose, develop plan and budget
    • Step 2: Develop local poverty indicators and formulate survey questions
    • Step 3: Design the sampling strategy
    • Step 4: Train staff and perform the survey
    • Step 5: Analyse and present the data
    • Step 6: Present findings
  • Tool 3: Community Evaluation
    • Evaluating local government programmes through community focus groups
    • Steps 1-3
    • Steps 4-6
    • Steps 7-8
    • Community evaluation step-by-step
  • Tool 4: Scenario-based Planning
    • What is scenario-based planning?
    • Scenario-based planning step-by-step
    • Visioning
    • Pathways
• Final Remarks
• Acknowledgements
• Additional Resources
• PDF Version

The example in Box 6 shows that data gathered only once cannot generate meaningful conclusions about change. Information must be collected consistently at intervals that make sense for the subject matter. Should the information be collected weekly? Monthly? Yearly? The frequency depends on the objective of monitoring. If the child’s weight is monitored to identify health problems, then monitoring every year will not be enough. On the other hand, monitoring her weight weekly might be too burdensome. The key is finding a balance between having enough observations to be able to identify and react to important trends without making the process too costly or time consuming.

Data must be collected at meaningful times. For instance, the Bolivian census occurs during the dry season in Pando when most families live in the urban municipalities. The regional health authority uses the population information from the census to determine how health resources are to be distributed to the municipalities. However, during the rainy season, the forest municipalities are overburdened by families that migrate to collect Brazil nuts. The municipal health posts struggle to provide services to this influx of people because their resources have been budgeted for the low population levels of the dry season. Furthermore, the rainy season is the peak time for malaria, compounding the strain on health services. In this situation, inaccurate census data distorts the distribution of health resources. Ideally, demographic data should take into account seasonal migrations to provide a more accurate picture.

© 2007 Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)
Contributors and copyright information