Assessment of community wellness outcomes to measure ICT impact

Abstract

Measuring the development impacts of ICTD interventions continues to be an unresolved problem, especially when trying to include non-traditional development measures beyond economic growth, such as empowerment and social capital. A growing body of work shows that the impact of ICTD programs is more frequently related to capabilities and other non-material notions of wellness, and that these aspects are easily missed when looking only at traditional tangible outcomes such as income or economic growth, education and health. We argue for an alternate approach that measures non-material impacts of ICTD, which we term Community Wellness Outcomes (CWO). We suggest measurement instruments (qualitative and quantitative) to assess CWO related to self-efficacy/self-esteem, expressions of aspirations, personal relations, and civic engagement. Through testing in community settings in Brazil (LAN Houses) and in Colombia (public libraries) we will refine and validate the measurement of CWO as a way to understand non-material impacts of ICTD from the perspective of human capabilities and community wellness, offering a more complete picture of the contributions of ICT to community development than those that rely solely on traditional economic development measures.

A benefits framework for public access ICT4D programmes

“…Authors highlighted existing gaps in the knowledge of evaluation of benefits and the nature of these benefits and acknowledged the complexity of measuring social development in ICT4D (Ashraf et al, 2007(Ashraf et al, , 2008Gomez, 2008;Gomez et al, 2013;Grunfeld, 2007;Sey & Fellows, 2011). The focus of evaluation attempts shifted to the concept of human development.…”

Revisiting CGNet Swara and its impact in rural India

“…The question of impact, and how to measure it, has been the subject of ongoing discussion in ICTD (e.g., [9,10,11,15,16,20,21]). One of the reasons for this is that impact is complex to understand and measure, going beyond simple statistics of uptake and usage.…”

“…While the definition of "impact" in ICTD is a matter of debate [15,16,20,21], researchers typically share a deep motivation for bringing benefits to low-income stakeholders, and there are various quantitative [10,14] and qualitative [9,10,16,21,26] tools for evaluating such impacts. This paper advances our understanding of impact in ICTD by examining the evolution of a project from a research prototype to a real-world system encompassing tens of thousands of users.…”

Measurement of tangible and intangible impacts of telecentres on rural communities

“…It is possible that the use of computers and the Internet for social change is not happening in public spaces, but rather in the private spaces of organizations, schools, homes, and workplaces [18]. Another more recent study pointed out that the impact of ICTD only focused on measurable impacts such as income or economic growth, education and health rather than on nonmeasurable impacts, which can be easily missed [19]. Other researchers have acknowledged the challenges and pointed out about the evaluation of social empowerment "it is much more difficult to assess people's self-esteem, than their ability to read and write" [15].…”

“…Gomez, in his earlier study (2008), indicated that intangible impacts of ICT on human development are also especially difficult to measure but are crucial measures of social impact [16]. However, it is quite difficult to conceptualize the real value of intangible impacts especially when it comes to evaluating the ICTD interventions' growing impacts, which continues unsolved especially when trying to include non-traditional development measures beyond economic growth such as empowerment and social capital [19]. The most recently published extensive report by the University of Washington on the "impacts of public access to ICT" on users and non-users suggested to fully understand the dynamics of public access impacts on non-users [33].…”