Example:
Concept
Variable
Indicator
Categories
Right to
water
Amount of
water
Litres per person
per day
Sufficient: >50 litres
Insufficient: <50 litres
Accessibility
Distance to the
water source
Accessible: <1km
Inaccessible: >1km
Collection time
Accessible: <30 min
Inaccessible: >30 min
Water quality
Physical and
chemical
characteristics
...
Affordability
Price related to
the household
income
Affordable: <3% of the household income
Unaffordable: >3% of the household
income
You need to take baby steps to go through from abstract ideas to empirical facts, from
vague to concrete terms, from complex to simple. To do so, it is always useful to graphically
represent the stages of this process. This Miró template (or any other visualization option)
will help you verify from top to bottom and vice versa that concepts and indicators are
properly linked.
The definitions and indicators must be coherent, so variables and categories as well.
Although it looks as a clear and rational process, we often see categories that show
misunderstanding of definitions.
4