ABSTRACT
With the fetish of using evidence and statistical measures in the public policy arena, the green shoots of all sorts of indicator sets are sprouting. While there is a gust of enthusiasm towards this new indicators movement, this euphony can easily turn into a haphazard collection of statistics without any real sense of direction and purpose. The measurement of many of these abstract concepts is not underpinned by theoretically sound or policy-focused frameworks (Innes and Booher 2000; Sawicki 2002; Wong 2000). In order to avoid going down the fateful ‘garbage in, garbage out’ approach as witnessed in the past, there is a need to revisit some of the methodological issues involved in the process of indicator development. This chapter, therefore, aims to highlight the key components and provide an overview of the methodological process of indicator development.
