Sustainability Planning and Monitoring

THE MPA IN ACTIONScoring principles in the MPA 14Ordinal scales are routinely used to convertqualitative data into numbers for comparisons ofperformance within and across samples and subsamplesin social research. The ordinal scoringtables developed for the MPA have the followingadded advantages.1. Increasing accuracy through the use of 0 – 100scales with “gaps.” The MPA uses 5 pointscales, which are convertible to 0-100 scales,with the 5 points at 0, 25, 50, 75, and 100.A description of the indicator being measuredaccompanies each scale point. In case theassessing group thinks its situation is notcorrectly reflected by any of the five points, butthat it falls somewhere in between twoconsecutive points, it can choose to score thesituation midway between the points concerned.Their reasons for doing so are alwaysrecorded. This provides valuable insights tothe project manager or monitoring unit aboutfield realities behind quantitative scores.2. Capturing hard-to-measure issues moremeaningfully through descriptive ordinalcategories. It is difficult to compare scores frompeople’s value judgments, as are common inordinal rating scales (e.g., Good = 100,Average = 50, Poor = 0). To overcome thisdifficulty, each MPA scale uses descriptivecategories arranged in a graduated order withreference to one particular indicator/dimensionbeing measured. For instance, the examplein Box 19 measures the quality and extent ofBox 19Scoring scale or “ladder” for community level assessment of gender equity inservice managementScore Score description Scoregivenconvertedby to 100communitypoint scale0 No woman in management functions at all, or only in name. 01 Women are members of lower-level management organization,but do not attend meetings regularly.2 Women members take part in meetings of lower-levelmanagement organizations, but not in decision making.3 Women members attend meetings of lower-level managementorganizations and make decisions together with men.4 Males and females both participate in meetings of lower andhigher-level management organizations and make decisions jointly.25507510014 This sub-section draws upon the paper “MPA: An improved methodology for participatory assessments” byA.J. James, presented at a workshop to produce a resource book Participatory Approaches to Project Design,Implementation and Evaluation, organized by the Institute of Rural Reconstruction (IIRR), the Philippines, andMysore Relief and Development Agency (MYRADA), Bangalore, July 2000. A.J. James was a member of theteam from WSP and IRC that developed the MPA and contributed substantially in the areas of quantificationof qualitative information and quantitative analysis.43