Developing the Methods and Instruments (TOOLS), Report Card 

A community ‘report card’ is often the key element of a community monitoring process. The ‘report card’ allows for the community experience of service delivery (or its absence) to be summarized and placed before a varied audience of stakeholders to decide on ways to address the shortcomings and gaps. It is key instrument which converts experience to evidence, and hence needs to be carefully thought of and prepared. The report cards usually have some categories which will be assessed. Here it is which in this case are also called domains/issues for enquiry. In a school report card these can be Language, Math, Geography, History and Science and in a report card around maternal health services these could be Coverage of Prenatal Services, Range of Services received, Cost of receiving services, Ease of Access, Quality of services and so on. For immunisation services for young children these could be Coverage and dropout, Range of vaccines including revaccination, Outreach education, Parents knowledge about vaccines, Quality of care and so on.

Once the domains or key issues for the report card have been finalized one needs to further break up the issue into sub-issues and questions and then identify the appropriate sources of information. The graphic below provides an illustration of how key issues for enquiry may be further developed into sub-issues and questions using one example from the report card as illustration.

Example of Report Card from Roma Community (Macedonia)
(Issues and Sub issues are graphically represented in the report card)

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