USE OF APPROPRIATE INDICATORS is the basis for assessing public policies and progress achieved with reference to goals set by major international summits. They are useful for evaluating programme impact, and where necessary, for making adjustments in changing contexts. While the major core indicators and the methodology for constructing them are presented in widely distributed documents, the same cannot be said for more specific sectors such as food and nutrition, not only at national level but also at lower administrative or community level. Moreover, useful indicators are often scattered across a large number of documents.
In this guide, indicators relevant to different aspects of nutrition and associated sectors are brought together, especially those which have appeared regularly over the last 15 years. More than a comprehensive list of indicators, the guide seeks to provide an illustration of the variety of the most relevant indicators and those most widely used in each sector, particularly with reference to indicators recommended by major expert bodies such as those of the United Nations.
The guide is organized into four chapters. The introduction presents issues concerned with identifying and choosing nutrition indicators, with particular reference to the goals set by the World Food Summit and the Millennium Development Summit. In order to help users choose indicators for a specific goal and in a given context, the second chapter explains the basic concepts in relation to different types of indicators, their characteristics and limitations, and then provides general principles for choosing and using them. Chapter 3 presents selected indicators grouped into six major sectors: nutrition, food security, care and caring capacity, health and demography, basic socio-economic and agro-ecological conditions. Finally, the conclusion summarizes the different steps to be followed in collecting the required indicators on a regular basis and in such a way that they can be used effectively. The guide may be read cursorily, although Chapter 3, displaying tables of indicators, can be used independently to identify quickly relevant indicators in a particular sector.
FOOD AND NUTRITION DIVISION
Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations
(FAO)
Viale delle Terme
di Caracalla
00100 Rome, Italy
www.fao.org
