Monday's summary

Orlando Hernandez - Monday 22 January 2007

Dear participants,

This conference is organized to discuss the usefulness and needed precision of indicators associated with behavioral determinants and behaviors regarding household water treatment and storage.

The behavioral determinant indicators under discussion are:

% of target audience (e.g., child caretakers) who:
-recall hearing or seeing a specific message
-know a product (e.g., a given chlorine solution) or a practice (e.g. solar disinfection);
-perceive a risk in a given behavior (e.g., leaving turbid water untreated) and are confident that they can correctly perform a practice;
-believe that the practice has a positive consequence (e.g., effective removal of water content that can make people get sick); and
-believe that a significant person (spouse, friend, relative) approves of the practice.

The behavioral indicators under discussion are:
Number of liters of water treated, and
% of households without access to a safe drinking water source practicing effective household water management.

One important question for program implementers is how to reduce the indicators to some manageable number which can be tracked over time. We have to think about what is that best indicator or best indicators and work on how to refine it to make it useful.

One reaction to the behavioral indicators listed above is that indicators to measure program implementation can focus on:
the producer,
the distributor; and
the consumer.

There are some indicators that may cut across these categories.

The behavioral indicators proposed by the discussion paper focus on the consumer. The suggestion is made that as far as the practices are concerned, effective water management can be broken down into three sub-categories:
-water treatment
-water storage, and
-water serving.

Water treatment may include:
-self reports of water treatment at the household level
-objective indicators of treated water present at the household
-absence of E. coli in household treated water, and
-chlorine residuals among self-declared chlorine residuals

Water storage may include household storing water in:
-narrow-mouth container, covered with a hard cap with tap
-wide-mouth container with a hard cover and tap
-jerry can with tap made out of hard material, or
-some bottle used for solar disinfection

Water serving may include households:
-serving water dirrectly from proper container
-using a device with a handle without touching the water and keeping water drawing tool covered from dust and hands, stored in fixed place out of the reach of children.

Use and sustained use may need to be distinguished and ways to calculate numerators and denominators must be spelled out.

To add clarity and focus the discussion, participants will find in the Documents Section of the conference a document entitled 'POU Indicator for Annual Reporting on USAID-funded Activities’. This is a proposal on how to measure the indicator:% of households practicing effective water management.