Asset-Based Indicator Framework

“What gets measured gets managed.” – Peter Drucker, management theorist
Why are you here? Are you a practitioner using creative community engagement? With marginalised groups maybe? Are you seeking to improve community members’ health and wellbeing? Hoping to reduce inequalities? Are you trying to achieve (health) outcomes? Meet local, national or international targets? Needing to ‘prove’ that what you’re doing ‘works’? To your managers? Funders? Boards? Government? Others?
Do you believe that creative community engagement ‘works’, but don’t know how to ‘prove’ this? Believe you have ‘evidence’ to ‘prove’ that creative community engagement works, but what you know, feel, experience, capture or report to your managers, funders, boards, policymakers or others doesn’t count as ‘evidence’?
Do you feel that health is linked to human connectivity and solidarity in some way, but don’t know how make this sound ‘scientific’ enough to be taken seriously? Do you need to ‘measure’ intangible things like trust, relationships or empathy (‘soft’ attributes that are actually quite ‘hard’ to make sense of) and vary (what’s happiness to me, isn’t happiness to you)? Do you want to change the way things are?
“When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves.”
– Viktor E. Frank, ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’
If you’re a community-based practitioner, you’ll be very familiar with asset-based approaches and guidance offered on how to ‘do’ or ‘evaluate’ them. You’ll also know how tricky this is to implement in the ‘real world’. There are barriers aplenty; most of them linked to a ‘lack of’ something – capacity, resources, time, trust to name but a few.
The challenges of our time are all too real.
Here we explore the use of a co-produced methodological and conceptual framework to measure impacts of community engagement approaches on health and inequalities developed with the Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership, black minority ethnic (BME) communities and third sector.
The co-produced Asset-Based Indicator Framework (ABIF) offers a mechanism for capturing changes in health and wellbeing when asset-based approaches are applied. If co-produced with a marginalised community, it helps us understand the reasons underpinning inequality for that particular community (at individual, community and structural levels). It also helps us identify the outcomes community members want to achieve to improve their health and change their circumstances.
The framework is not intended to be prescriptive – it can (and should) be adapted flexibly by practitioners and community members depending on circumstances and settings. It offers a way of thinking, a way of being, a way of doing, a way of collecting data, a way of objectifying the subjective – accessing ‘truth’ from diverse communities through creative community engagement. And then convincing policymakers that sometimes the only way we can access ‘truth’ and ‘evidence’ from the most marginalised in our society is through creative community engagement.
Introduction
The Asset-Based Indicator Framework (ABIF) was created to:
work with communities to identify and capture “soft” outcomes inherent in asset-based working.
show how these outcomes link to local, national and international targets, measures and policies. (Or maybe they don’t. Maybe outcomes and targets identified by community members aren’t aligned with performance measurements and policies. Could this be an opportunity for change?)
evidence changes (if any) in health, wellbeing and equity linked to asset-based work over time.
evaluating creative community engagement.
monitor the effectiveness of asset-based work to engage community members and co-produce services.
monitor and account for asset- based activity across topics and services (beyond health).
This is not an exhaustive list of what the framework could be used for. These are prompts – the start of a conversation to be continued in the community of practice.

The journey of using the co-produced ABIF – or co-producing ‘your version’ of the ABIF with the community you’re working with – progresses over five stages. Framework application starts the first time you engage with a community, which could also be the first time you should start capturing data (if you’ve already established a relationship with community members).
Context
To monitor changes in health and inequalities through creative community engagement, you first need to be aware of the context in which the engagement is happening. Without context, the data collected might be meaningless and changes difficult to understand.
Process
ABIF application involves understanding the ‘who?’ ‘what?’ why?’ and ‘how?’ of your community engagement project.
Indicators
Next, identify and define the indicators – assets or attributes – that are important to the community. The ones they want to develop and experience change in. The ones they want to progress in order to achieve outcomes (that they get to specify). The indicator list we use is a template for departure informed by the literature and our application of the framework.
Evaluation
This leads to the identification of outcomes that community members want to achieve. Three main outcomes are relevant to asset-based working – process, change and quality of life outcomes.
Policy
Finally, link community identified assets and outcomes to local, national and international policies.
The ABIF is co-produced with communities. As communities are comprised of community members, the ABIF captures changes at individual and community levels. It also captures changes at the structural level.
Frequently Asked Questions
Listen, acknowledge community members’ feelings, respond empathetically and try to understand community members’ concerns and the barriers preventing change. This in itself is a useful process to identify outcomes for a particular community.
Community members may indeed change or add new indicators to their co-produced framework. It’s important for you to understand what each indicator means to a particular community. How would they define this additional asset or attribute?
The indicators are provided as a starting point for engagement and aren’t intended to be prescriptive. It’s expected that community members may not wish to include some of the indicators in their co-produced framework. Some attributes or assets may not meaningful to them. If, however, community members want you to give them a definition of the ‘unclear’ indicators you can refer to Definitions of Indicators.pdf.
Ask community members how they would prefer to discuss or capture information. Do they want to draw, sing or act instead? Filming? Audio? Other means of data capturing?
Reflect on how this might impact your work with the community. Reflexivity is crucial. Capturing how your perceptions change during this process is central to evidencing process outcomes as these are related to community members’ experiences of using a service.
You really want to know how communities ‘define’ themselves. Are individuals within the community comfortable with the ‘categorisation’ you have in mind? It may be that you’re putting community members in a ‘box’ that they don’t identify with (for example, BME).
Co-production involves building trust and sustaining relationships. It is crucial to engage on a continuous basis (what is reasonable) and not parachute in to a community to suit organisational objectives. This is important to capture quality of life outcomes (the perceived quality of an community member’s daily life). Be transparent about lack of resources and capacity so the community is aware of the challenges you face. Stay engaged in open conversation. Radical honesty all the way!
Part of the process of co-production involves understanding differences and negotiating potential ways forward. Capturing how you negotiate differences is central to process outcomes and change outcomes – it’s related to communities’ experiences of services and will help you understand what improvements community members are seeking.
Building trust with the community is fundamental to the process of co-production. Try to understand why the community does not want you to be a part of this process. Is there a way to build trust and convince them of your intentions over time? Tracking changes in perceptions of trust is an integral part of evaluating your engagement.
Think of ways in which the community is already engaging in creative activities. Can you join them? Is there a way to link up with other organisations to pool resources and capacity? Maybe others are already engaged with a particular community and you could get involved too? Perhaps you can apply for joint funding to develop and sustain your engagement? Be creative and also critical – it’s important to be vocal about the support you need to work in this way.
How you engage should be negotiated with the community. Community members should feel that they are being listened to and there is a shared understanding. Some may lean towards the arts (singing, dancing, theatre, music or other). Others may want to be outdoors in greenspaces or in the kitchen. As long as it’s feasible and ethical, anything may be possible!
The idea is to collect data from community members in the way that feels most appropriate to them. They should have a chance to voice how and why they think the method they’re proposing is more appropriate than others. For example, literacy may be an issue so visual methods more fitting. You should also negotiate how data will be shared. Are there any ethical issues. Is the community happy to sign informed consent sheets?
By now you’ll have worked through the process; identified what indicators are important to a community and what they mean to community members; determined how best to collect data to ‘evidence’ changes in health and wellbeing as engagements progress; identified outcomes aligned with relevant policies; and continued to engage and collect data over a specified (realistic) period of time. But maybe, according to community members, nothing’s changed for them. Reflect on the reasons for this. You should have established strong relationships with community members by this stage so gathering honest responses will help to further understand barriers and potential ways for overcoming them.
Listen, acknowledge feelings, respond empathetically and encourage support. If you accept people’s response, they will continue to tell you how they are feeling. This will help you respond to some of their concerns.
Your role is to understand what outcomes are important to community members. What is it that they want to achieve? What support do they say they will need to achieve these outcomes?