Measuring stigma reduction at the community-level

Impel led a study to enhance Humanity & Inclusion’s programme monitoring by designing and testing an outcome measurement method that can be used to collect data regardless of the operational context, geographical location, thematic sector and/or intervention modality to measure reductions in interpersonal stigma (i.e., interactions that occur between stigmatised and non-stigmatised people) associated with disability, gender and age.

Developing a method to measure changes in interpersonal stigma is highly innovative in the global development and humanitarian sectors; developing a method that can be applied equally to all projects, regardless of context, geographical area, sectors or intervention modalities is also highly ambitious. The study successfully developed a viable approach for engaging community-members on the issue of interpersonal stigma and for community-members to ‘score’ perceived levels of and changes to interpersonal stigma at different periods of time or at different locations. Further testing of the method is planned, but the discussions the outcome measurement method generates and the resulting qualitative data looks highly likely to provide nuanced evidence regarding stigma reduction.

The full study report is available here.