CE 2.4 Develop Monitoring Plan and Conduct Baseline Assessment

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2.4.1 Develop monitoring indicators and methods
2.4.2 Conduct baseline assessment
Tools and resources helpful to supporting this step

2.4.1 Develop monitoring indicators and methods

As you prepare for the implementation phase, you also need to plan how you will monitor the project in terms of activity outputs and animal welfare and behavioural outcomes. While you/CCAs have already worked with target community members to identify their own means of assessing their successes in previous steps, this step focuses on identifying what the project desires to monitor to assess the effectiveness of the project, which may be different than community identified indicators. Remember to ensure that whatever indicators you select identify the intended target by gender or other particularly vulnerable group requiring special consideration as appropriate to the project context and desired results. When thinking about what to measure, consider the following:

1. Impact Indicators: impact indicators allow you to assess progress towards higher level goals. Impact level indicators may be focused on how animal welfare has improved because of the project, or benefits perceived by the community as a result of the project/improving animal welfare. Examples of impact level indicators to consider may include:
   
   • Indicators of animal welfare that reflect what you would expect to improve due to the project e.g. number of, or severity of wounds, disease prevalence or severity.
   
   • Benefits perceived by communities as a result of improving animal welfare/ the project.
   
2. Outcome Indicators: outcome indicators should enable the project to determine the extent to which the project activities achieved their stated aims in terms of desired behaviour change. Outcome indicators are also often related to the identified barriers/pre-conditions which need to be place which the project seeks to address to support adoption of desired behaviours.
   
   Consider assessing the following:
   
   • The extent to which your priority groups practice the desired behaviours, such as “XX% men or women animal carers clean their animal’s shelter daily” [20]
   
   • The most important barriers/pre-conditions for practicing and sustaining the promoted behaviours, such as access to the required resources or services (e.g. “XX% of women animal owners who know where to seek quality animal health services”) (refer to Behaviour Change Planning Table step 4) [20]
   
   • In addition to the indicators above, it is also helpful to assess the following [20]:
   - Why people practice the promoted behaviours? - such findings provide extremely useful lessons for further promotion of these behaviours in the existing or planned projects.
   - Why do people not practice the promoted behaviours? - such findings are crucial for re-designing your strategy to address the factors which prevent people from practicing the behaviours.
   
3. Output Indicators: indicators related to output should enable the project to assess how well the project activities were implemented, as opposed to measure the resultant changes that emerge because of activities.
   
   • Refer to project activities and develop indicators for each activity.
   
   For example:
   
   - Total number of male/female animal owning community members attending educational event.
   - Total number of welfare promoting equipment made, purchased, and/or sold (e.g. collars, harnesses, carts etc.).
   - Total number of women participating in training sessions.
   - Total number of educational posters or murals displayed publicly.

It is also useful to consider the following recommendations related to when to measure [20]:

1. At the project’s start: conduct a baseline survey to determine the percentage of people who/do not practice the promoted behaviours; and the existing pre-conditions (identified barriers/motivators) for practicing the desired behaviour (e.g. people’s knowledge, availability of resources), as well as for relevant animal welfare indicators if an animal welfare assessment was not conducted at the start of the project initiation phase.
2. Throughout the project: keep monitoring 1) the quality of your activities (by using checklists, observations, interviews); 2) the extent to which people start adopting the promoted behaviours and welfare issues are improved (based on observations, regular monitoring data); 3) the progress on addressing the pre-conditions for sustainability, 4) reasons why people adopt the promoted behaviours or not.
3. At the end of the project: conduct an end line assessment to measure the animal welfare indicators and percentage of priority group members who practice the promoted behaviours and compare this to the results of your baseline assessments. It is recommended the end line assessment also assess the main reasons why people (did not) adopt the promoted behaviours.
4. 2-3 years after the project: replicate the end line assessment of animal welfare and human behaviour to assess the extent to which the desired behaviours have been sustained after the project’s support has ended.

Once you have identified the outcome and output indicators, add them to your Behaviour Change Planning Table and decide on a sampling monitoring plan. Identify the most appropriate methods of data collection and develop appropriate monitoring tools and ensure your sampling plan supports data collection by sex or other marginalized groups as relevant to your project context to enable you to assess the extent of equal participation, impact, and benefits across the target audience(s). As you develop your monitoring plan, think about the indicators CCAs may be able to monitor using participatory tools such as the Animal welfare transect walk, and those which project staff will be responsible for monitoring.

2.4.2 Conduct baseline assessment

Before implementing any project activities with communities, do a baseline assessment using the chosen methods and indicators of animal welfare and human behaviour. If the Animal welfare transect walk is being used as a method for project data collection, you may be able to use the previously collected data as a baseline rather than carry out the activity again.

Link to References Cited