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Community indicators are "measurements that provide information about past and current trends and assist planners and community leaders in making decisions that affect future outcomes". They provide insight into the overall direction of a community: whether it is improving, declining, or staying the same, or is some mix of all three. In essence, indicators are measurements that reflect the interplay between social, environmental, and economic factors affecting a region’s or community’s
well-being Well-being is what is Intrinsic value (ethics), ultimately good for a person. Also called "welfare" and "quality of life", it is a measure of how well life is going for someone. It is a central goal of many individual and societal endeavors. ...
. Community indicators projects typically are conducted by
non-profit organization A nonprofit organization (NPO), also known as a nonbusiness entity, nonprofit institution, not-for-profit organization, or simply a nonprofit, is a non-governmental (private) legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public, or so ...
s within a community, although in some cases they are initiated by the public sector.


History

Community indicators are a localized response to the perceived invalidity of the traditional predominantly economic indicators, such as GDP, that are used for measuring human progress. This invalidity takes two forms. First, economic indicators account for all money transactions as beneficial for quality of life, whereas some of these can be seen as decidedly negative (e.g., money spent on environmental cleanup of pollution that could have been prevented). Secondly, strictly economic indicators do not count the value of non-monetary activity, such as homemaker and volunteer work and non-cash public assistance, which are decidedly positive for the quality of life of many families (Journal article by David Swain, Danielle Hollar; International Journal of Public Administration, Vol. 26, 2003). A communities level approach to this apparent invalidity is based on the evidence of a social group whose members reside in a specific locality, share government, and often have a common culture and history. Community indicators are not a new concept; they have been in use since 1910, when the
Russell Sage Foundation The Russell Sage Foundation is an American non-profit organisation established by Margaret Olivia Slocum Sage, Margaret Olivia Sage in 1907 for “the improvement of social and living conditions in the United States.” It was named after her re ...
initiated the development of local surveys for measuring industrial, educational, recreational, and other factors. The processes used by the Sage Foundation are similar to those that reemerged during the 1990s. But the difference today is the use of indicators to consider the full spectrum of a community’s well-being, not just isolated factors. Nowadays, indicators are used by many constituencies within a
community A community is a social unit (a group of people) with a shared socially-significant characteristic, such as place, set of norms, culture, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given g ...
. After a decade of renewed attention to community indicators, they now represent a valuable mechanism to improve monitoring and evaluation in planning. Russell Sage Foundation employed “over two thousand local surveys taken on education, recreation,
public health Public health is "the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private, communities and individuals". Analyzing the de ...
, crime, and general social conditions” to assess social conditions. The first survey was conducted in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...
. (In the late 1990s, Pittsburgh again embraced indicators, with its Sustainable Pittsburgh Goals and Indicators Project.) Many of the surveys used by the Sage Foundation were conducted by nonprofit organizations, such as chambers of commerce and citizen committees. These surveys yielded social trends indicators and were popular until the
Great Depression The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...
and World War II, when economic measures such as the
gross domestic product Gross domestic product (GDP) is a monetary measure of the total market value of all the final goods and services produced and rendered in a specific time period by a country or countries. GDP is often used to measure the economic performanc ...
or
gross national product The gross national income (GNI), previously known as gross national product (GNP), is the total amount of factor incomes earned by the residents of a country. It is equal to gross domestic product (GDP), plus factor incomes received from n ...
indicators took greater precedence


Community information systems objectives

Community information systems (CIS) bring together a wide range of community indicators —
social Social organisms, including human(s), live collectively in interacting populations. This interaction is considered social whether they are aware of it or not, and whether the exchange is voluntary or not. Etymology The word "social" derives fro ...
,
economic An economy is an area of the Production (economics), production, Distribution (economics), distribution and trade, as well as Consumption (economics), consumption of Goods (economics), goods and Service (economics), services. In general, it is ...
and environmental data and information around objectives: * Monitoring the health, social well-being and sustainability of communities through the management of Quality of Life indicators; * Bringing together government performance indicators and community targeted indicators into a single solution; * Widening the use of data by citizens and public officials to support decision-making, improve policy and target resources; * Providing a wider local intelligence context to
key performance indicators A performance indicator or key performance indicator (KPI) is a type of performance measurement. KPIs evaluate the success of an organization or of a particular activity (such as projects, programs, products and other initiatives) in which it e ...
for government officials; * Communicating outcome measures to citizens, stimulating public debate and building confidence in progress towards societal goals.


See also

*
Circles of Sustainability Circles of Sustainability is a method for understanding and assessing sustainability, and for project management directed towards socially sustainable outcomes. It is intended to handle 'seemingly intractable problems' such as outlined in sustai ...
* Engaged theory * Open Semantic Framework *
Quality of life Quality of life (QOL) is defined by the World Health Organization as "an individual's perception of their position in life in the context of the culture and value systems in which they live and in relation to their goals, expectations, standards ...
*
Social change Social change is the alteration of the social order of a society which may include changes in social institutions, social behaviours or social relations. Sustained at a larger scale, it may lead to social transformation or societal transformat ...
*
Sociology Sociology is the scientific study of human society that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. The term sociol ...


Further reading

* Ammons, D. N. 1996. Municipal Benchmarks: Assessing Local Performance and Establishing
Community Standards As a legal term in the United States, community standards arose from a test to determine whether material is or is not Obscenity, obscene as explicated in the 1957 Supreme Court of the United States, Supreme Court decision in the matter of Roth v. U ...
. Thousand Oaks, Calif.:
Sage Publications Sage Publishing, formerly SAGE Publications, is an American independent academic publishing company, founded in 1965 in New York City by Sara Miller McCune and now based in the Newbury Park neighborhood of Thousand Oaks, California. Sage ...
. * Andrews, J. H. 1996. “Planning Practice: Going by the Numbers.” Planning, September, 14–18. * Besleme, Kate, and Megan Mullin. 1997. “Community Indicators and Healthy Communities.” National Civic Review 86, no. 1: 43–52. * * {{Cite journal , year=2010 , last1= Scerri , first1= Andy , last2= James , first2= Paul , authorlink2= Paul James (academic) , title= Accounting for sustainability: Combining qualitative and quantitative research in developing 'indicators' of sustainability , url= https://www.academia.edu/3230887 , journal= International Journal of Social Research Methodology , volume= 13 , issue= 1 , pages= 41–53, doi= 10.1080/13645570902864145


External links


Canadian Sustainability Indicators Network

Community Indicators Consortium

Community Building Insights

CIV; Community Indicators Victoria

Community Indicators Initiative Of Spokane

Community Indicator Blog
by Ben Warner
DataHaven, New Haven Community Indicators Website

South Australia's Strategic Plan

Jacksonville Community Council Inc, Jacksonville, FL

Pinellas Community Indicators - Pinellas County, Florida, USA
Community building Information