ABSTRACT
Indicators alone are idle information, which hardly convey any meaningful message for policy-making. It is the analysis of indicators against the wider context and policy objectives that provides the added value of converting information into intelligence. The focus of this chapter is, therefore, to explore alternative approaches used to improve the interpretation, analysis and presentation of indicators. As discussed in Chapter 2, one of the key concerns of indicator development is how to provide a synopsis of the concept being measured. Paul Lazarsfeld commented that ‘so long as a set of data has not been classified, even summarily, it is impossible to analyse the relations between variables’ (Lazarsfeld 1970: 329). Olson also stressed the importance of having a consolidated grouping of social indicators by aggregation, by representation or by classification (Olson 1969 in Cazes 1972: 21). The need to provide a parsimonious summary of the meaning of indicators is also a pragmatic one. If research is to be infiltrated into the decision-making process, the message that emerges from the findings has to be sharp and clear. The discussion here aims to explore some of the longstanding debates over the techniques used to simplify indicator values and the pros and cons of creating composite indices to provide the type of policy intelligence required.
