A Step By Step Guide To Monitoring And Evaluation

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A step by step guide to
Monitoring and Evaluaion
Photo:
Mim
Saxl
Photography

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Contents
Credits
This resource was
developed as part of the
Project ‘Monitoring and
Evaluaion for Sustainable
Communiies’ (htp://www.
geog.ox.ac.uk/research/
technologies/projects/
monitoringandevaluaion.
html) funded by the Higher
Educaion Innovaion Fund
at the University of Oxford,
and builds on ongoing work
undertaken as part of the
ongoing research project
‘EVALOC: Evaluaing Low
carbon communiies’ project
(www.evaloc.org.uk/ ).
Monitoring and Evaluaion
for Sustainable Communiies
by htp://www.geog.
ox.ac.uk/research/
technologies/projects/
monitoringandevaluaion.
html is licensed under
a Creaive Commons
Atribuion-NonCommercial-
ShareAlike 3.0 Unported
License.
Version 1.0 Published
January 2014.
Secion 1: Explanatory notes 3
Background 3
Using the resources 3
What is Monitoring and Evaluaion 5
Why do M&E 6
Agreeing some guiding principles 6
Deciding which programmes to monitor 7
Deciding who to involve 7
Deciding key issues 7
Clarifying your aims 8
Idenify informaion you need 10
Deciding how to collect the informaion 13
Assessing your contribuion 14
Analysing and using the informaion 16
Communicaing the data 17
Ethics and data collecion 17
Annexes to Secion 1
1. An example of a change pathway 18
2. Example of acivity monitoring 19
3. Examples of resilience indicators 20
4. Examples of headline indicators 21
5. Dealing with complex change 22
Secion 2: Planning your M&E 24
A framework to help you plan your strategy for M&E
Secion 3: Informaion collecion methods 33
Internal records 33
Tracking relevant secondary informaion 33
Group workshops 34
Short surveys 35
Semi-structured interviews 36
Secion 4: Overview of resources 37
The best of what’s around 37
Start where you are 38
Community and household footprining 39
Events and Surveys 41
Group processes 42
Other online sources of informaion 43
Designing survey quesions 44
Group evaluaion tools 44
Visual tools for discussion 46
Roles mapping 47
Discussion 48
Secion 5: Useful quesions for interviews/surveys 49

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A step by step guide to Monitoring and Evaluaion
Introduction
This resource is designed to help groups working on community led approaches to climate change
and energy conduct their own Monitoring and Evaluaion (M&E). It aims to provide an accessible
background to the principles of M&E, together with selected links to resources and approaches that
may be useful for your group.
Background
These resources were trialled at two workshops that took place in June 2013, and were atended
by representaives from 25 diferent community groups working on energy and climate change. The
workshops built on interviews with 10 community groups; a wider survey on M&E experiences and
needs; and the authors own experiences of M&E through research and pracical experience with
and in community groups.
The selecion of resources below responds to an ideniied dearth of comparable evidence across
low carbon/community energy movements. While the aim is to combine ease of use with the
producion of useful outcomes, the list of resources is by no means exhausive, as resources and
methods are constantly evolving.
Using the resources
The booklet is divided into secions. Secion 1 gives an overview of the approach to M&E in
use, which is based on a logic model approach. Secion 2 is a template for your own M&E
resources. As a pdf format, you can print this out, or type into it. You can also download the
resource as a word document at: htp://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/research/technologies/projects/
monitoringandevaluaion.html

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Secion 3 gives an overview of informaion collecion methods, whilst secion 4 provides links to
a host of resources to support your M&E. Finally, secion 5 contains some example quesions and
materials.
This material is a work in progress, as during 2014 there will be further trialling of a selecion of
M&E tools with community groups. You can read more about the project here:
htp://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/research/technologies/projects/mesc/
Thanks are extended to the groups who were interviewed for this project, who paricipated in the
workshops, and/or gave their feedback on the resources. Thanks also to the Transiion Research
Network, and their Connected Communiies Arts and Humaniies Research Network project for the
iniial collaboraive impetus for this project. Finally, graitude is extended to the Transiion Network,
and the Low Carbon Communiies Network for partnering with the project.
Kersty Hobson, Ruth Mayne, Jo Hamilton
December 2013
Photo:
Mim
Saxl
Photography

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What is Monitoring and Evaluaion (M&E)?
Monitoring is the collecion and analysis of informaion about a project or programme, undertaken
while the project/programme is ongoing.
Evaluaion is the periodic, retrospecive assessment of an organisaion, project or programme that
might be conducted internally or by external independent evaluators.
Acion Research is a term for a variety of
methodologies that at their core are cycles of
planning, acion and relecion. This is a useful
approach when thinking about how to integrate
your M&E into on-going plans and aciviies.
There are many Acion Research methodologies
which could be used as part of your M&E. A good
overview and resources can be found at the
Ashridge Centre for Acion Research1
Paricular
methods that you may ind useful are Co-
operaive Inquiry2
and Appreciaive Inquiry3
.
1 htp://www.ashridge.org.uk/Website/Content.nsf/wFARACAR/Ashridge+Centre+for+Acion+Research?opendocument
2 htp://www.human-inquiry.com/cishortg.htm
3 htp://appreciaiveinquiry.case.edu/intro/default.cfm
1. Why do M&E?
The irst step is to be clear about why you want to do M&E and the beneits it can ofer.
Community volunteers and acivists oten want to make the world a beter place, making them
acion-orientated and oten under-resourced. Monitoring and evaluaion can someimes seem
like an unafordable luxury, an administraive burden, or an unwelcome instrument of external
oversight. But if used well, M&E can become a powerful tool for social and poliical change.
A broader way of thinking about M&E is Acion Research
Section 1: Explanatory notes

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4 htp://www.lowcarbonwestoxford.org.uk/
2. Agreeing some guiding principles
It is useful to develop some guiding principles to ensure that your M&E is relevant, useful, imely,
and credible. Some examples might include making sure the M&E and/or informaion you collect is:
• focused and feasible in relaion to your available resources so that it supports rather than
diverts resources from acion (i.e. make sure you focus informaion collecion on what you
‘need to know’, not on what would be ‘nice to know’);
• useful and imely informaion to improve group learning, group decision making, and
project design;
• useable by, and/or comparable to, data collected by other stakeholders so it contributes to
the wider evidence base;
• credible, valid and reliable to the extent possible within your available resources;
• sensiive to unequal power relaions when you collect informaion (i.e. ensure that you
listen to people who might be marginalised in the community or do not have a strong voice);
• ethical e.g. in relaion to data consent and protecion.
‘We use the monitoring data from our
household energy saving project to moivate
other residents to take acion. The informaion
also helped us demonstrate the efeciveness
of our approach to the local council which
subsequently got funding and worked with us to
set up a Community Hub to support other local
communiies to take acion’
(Low Carbon West Oxford4
volunteer)
Doing M&E can help you assess what diference you are making and can provide vital intelligence,
for example to help you:
• assess and demonstrate your efeciveness in achieving your objecives and/or impacts on
people’s lives;
• improve internal learning and decision making about project design, how the group
operates, and implementaion i.e. about success factors, barriers, which approaches work/
don’t work etc;
• empower and moivate volunteers and supporters;
• ensure accountability to key stakeholders (e.g. your community, your members/supporters,
the wider movement, funders, supporters);
• inluence government policy;
• share learning with other communiies and the wider movement;
• contribute to the evidence base about efeciveness and limits of community acion.

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3. Deciding which programmes/projects you need to monitor
It is important to decide and prioriise the programmes or projects you will monitor as it is unlikely
you will have the resources to monitor all your intervenions at the same ime. So you will need
to think about which programmes or projects you want to assess; over
what ime period; and whether it is an on-going acivity which requires
monitoring or a completed acivity which requires evaluaion.
4. Deciding who to involve in the diferent
stages of your M&E
To ensure M & E is relevant to your stakeholders it is important that
you consider their informaion needs, as well as your own. You will
therefore need to idenify the key internal and external stakeholders,
and decide how to involve them in the design, implementaion, analysis
and/or communicaion of indings.
Examples of people you might want to include are (a) people directly
involved in your projects (b) stakeholders in your wider community
(geographic or community of interest) such as speciic groups of
residents, speciic networks, community groups, the wider movement,
and/or (c) external stakeholders e.g. funders, local and naional policy
makers. It might also be possible to work in partnership University
departments. For useful background informaion about working with
University researchers, see the Transiion Research Network5
, and the
Transiion Research Primer6
.
5. Deciding the key issues and quesions you will want to
invesigate
The next key step is to idenify the issues and quesions you wish to learn about, and hence monitor.
These oten include:
Issues and quesions internal to your group
• Organisaional capacity/group processes – how well are you working together in relaion to
the following?:
- needed resources (human, inancial, technical)
- leadership and vision
- management (e.g. clarity about aims, objecives, roles & responsibility; adaptability)
- cost efeciveness
- sustainability (e.g. inance and/or volunteer burn out)
• Joint working – how well are you working with others, for example
- in relaion to partnerships, the wider movement, alliances, coaliions
- disseminaing or sharing good pracice and techniques
5 htp://www.transiionresearchnetwork.org/
6 htp://www.transiionresearchnetwork.org/transiion-research-primer.html

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Issues and quesions external to your group
• Relevance/acceptability - how relevant are your projects to diferent demographic secions
of the community?
• Efeciveness - are you achieving your objecives (e.g. in relaion to aitudes & values;
behaviours; public support; community capacity/local resilience; the wider movement;
improved policies & increased democraic space)? What internal or external factors are
facilitaing/constraining progress?
• Impact - what is your impact on people’s lives (e.g. in relaion to the ulimate changes in
people’s lives or environment as a result of our iniiaives)?
• Contribuion/atribuion - what contribuion have you made to outcomes and impacts (in
relaion to other factors/actors)?
You will need to decide whether or not to monitor or evaluate all of these quesions or just some.
This is likely to require balancing informaion needs with available resources.
6. Clarifying your aims, objecives, aciviies and pathways to
change
Deiniions
In order to assess progress you need to know what you are trying to achieve and how: that is, your
aims, objecives and planned aciviies. As this is not a planning guide we cannot go into detail here
about how to develop your strategy, but it is generally helpful to start by clarifying your aims and
objecives (i.e. your desired impacts and outcomes) and then plan the aciviies that you (and other
actors) will carry out to achieve them.
Concept Deiniion Example
Aims (desired
impacts)
The inal impacts on peoples’
lives or the environment that you
wish to achieve
To reduce our individual and community
carbon emissions & contribuion to climate
change; to contribute to a fairer, more
prosperous and sustainable community; to
improve well-being
Objecives
(desired
outcomes)
The changes you need to make
so that you achieve your aims
(desired impacts)
To increase personal agency; to encourage
more sustainable living/behaviours; to
increase community resilience/capacity to
withstand external shocks; supporive and
fair government policies
Outputs The immediate and direct result
of your aciviies that contribute
to your objecives (desired
outcomes)
To engage X paricipants in projects/
events/training from y and z demographic
groups; to plant X trees, to facilitate
swapping of Y items at a Bring & Take event
Aciviies The programme & project
aciviies and processes you
undertake so that you achieve
your desired outputs
Community engagement & awareness
raising; acion/learning groups on
household energy use & lifestyles;
community food, transport, waste
reducion projects
Inputs The key human, inancial,
technical, organisaional and/or
social resources that you need to
undertake your aciviies
Volunteer capacity and availability; access
to IT and other online resources; fund
raised and available
Table 1 – Key concepts & deiniions in project design & strategy

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Photo: Mike Grenville
Pathway to change
Although change can be complex it can be helpful to present your programme and strategy in
the form of a change pathway, or an impact chain. This describes how your project aciviies will
contribute to your desired outcomes (your objecives); which will in turn contribute to inal impacts
(your aims). A simpliied impact chain looks like this:
In pracice your impact chain is unlikely to be linear: there may be muliple outcomes and impacts
and there may be interacions and feedback loops between diferent parts of the pathway. We
have provided an illustraive example of an impact chain in Annex 1 and drawn out some of the
implicaions of complex and unpredictable change for M&E in Annex 5.
Change Assumpions
A change pathway/ impact chain can be useful because it reveals the interrelaionships between
aciviies, outcomes and impacts and therefore also your change assumpions or theory about how
you think change will be achieved. These assumpions are oten implicit rather than explicit so
you may not even be aware of them. If you haven’t already done so it’s worth taking ime in your
group to discuss them to see whether you are all in agreement, whether they seem plausible, and/
or whether you might need to invesigate them more. You could test them against exising theories
of change, evidence and/or your pracical experience or the experience of other groups. The more
well-founded your change assumpions at the start the greater your impact is likely to be.
The box below provides a simple example of the impact chain and change assumpions
underpinning a community awareness raising project:
Project design Desired changes Change assumpions
Aims:
To reduce our individual &
community’s contribuion
to carbon emissions
Desired impacts:
Reduced household &
community energy use/
carbon emissions
Objecives:
To change people’s
behaviours
Desired Outcomes:
More sustainable
behaviours among
residents
How outcomes will lead to impacts
Our project design assumes that if people
change their energy (related) behaviours
this will reduce their carbon emissions
Planned aciviies
Providing residents with
informaion via lealets
and community events
Desired Interim
Outcomes
Increased ‘residents
awareness’ about
climate change
How aciviies will lead to desired
outcomes
Our project design assumes that:
a) if people understand climate change
they will change their behaviours; and
b) the community group is a ‘trusted’
messenger that people will listen to
Table 2 – Examples of change assumpions

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The above example assumes that raising awareness about
climate change will change peoples’ behaviours and hence
reduce carbon emissions. In pracice there are factors other
than peoples’ awareness that inluence behaviour such as
agency, capacity, resources, social norms, infrastructures,
technologies, cultural norms and government policy. Therefore
a project based solely on this change assumpion runs the risk
of not meeing desired outcomes. Conversely community
groups are someimes hugely ambiious and assume they have
the capacity to achieve their objecives when in fact change
generally requires acion by a range of actors. Mapping out
your change pathway and idenifying your change assumpions
can help you work out what contribuion you can make and
what contribuions other actors need to make.
As well as helping you track outcomes and impacts, M&E can
also help you test how well founded your change assumpions
are, and whether you need to modify your project design. In
the example above, you might decide to interview paricipants
ater an event or course, and ask them open quesions about
what factors they think might help and/or constrain them
from changing their behaviours, as well as which sources of
informaion they trust, such as organisaions, websites and the
media.
7. Idenifying what informaion you need to collect
Generally you are likely to need informaion to:
• Track and assess what has changed (both intended and unintended);
• Understand the reasons for changes - i.e. what factors/organisaions/individuals have
facilitated/constrained change (including your contribuion);
• Interpret the changes i.e. people’s percepions and experiences of change.
The informaion you collect might either be
• Quanitaive informaion expressed in numerical terms as numbers and raios for example.
This informaion will allow you to answer ‘what’, ‘how many’ and ‘when’ quesions.
• Qualitaive informaion is expressed through descripive prose and can address quesions
about ‘why’ and ‘how’, as well as percepions, aitudes and beliefs.
The precise informaion you need will be determined by your choice of key issues and quesion (see
Table 3 below).
Indicators
If you want to track intended changes resuling from your programmes or projects you will need to
idenify indicators. These are speciic and concrete pieces of informaion that enable you to track
the changes you are trying to achieve.

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If, for example, if you have chosen to assess your efeciveness (i.e. the extent to which you are
achieving your objecives) or impacts you will need to idenify and track relevant ‘outcome’ and
‘impact indicators’. An example of an outcome indicator might be changes in residents’ energy
related behaviours e.g. the number of residents cycling, using the train or car club. An example
of an impact indicator might be changes to residents’ fuel bills, household energy use and carbon
emissions (see table 3 below).
You need to make sure that indicators are relevant, speciic (and where possible measurable), and
are imetabled to be gathered at key points in a project or programme7
. Also importantly, indicators
need to be accompanied by open ended quesions (see below). Taken together this informaion
should provide credible evidence of changes associated with your aciviies.
You may ind it is not desirable or possible to monitor all your
desired outcomes and impact indicators on a coninual basis.
Small projects or programmes may only have a limited inluence
over some outcomes or impacts compared to other factors; the
outcomes or impacts might only occur in the longer term; and/
or it can be diicult and expensive to try and assess them on
your own. If you can aford to, you may want to conduct external
evaluaions or work with academics to conduct periodic in-depth
evaluaions. However, the ease or diiculty of tracking outcome or
impact indicators will vary. You may be able to use modelled data
or conversion factors to esimate impacts from outcomes e.g. to
esimate the health beneits generated from lot insulaion, or the
carbon savings from eaing less meat.
Tracking aciviies and outputs can give a useful indicaion of your
capacity and reach and can also be used as valuable informaion for evaluaions (see Annex 2 and 3
below). You might also use be able to use conversion factors or modelled data to esimate outcomes
from some of your outputs. For example, you can work out the amount of carbon emissions
saved from the numbers of trees planted or the health beneits from warmer homes. However,
tracking outputs on their own does not tell you what diference you are making in relaion to the
achievement of your objecives (outcomes) or to people’s lives (impacts).
Open quesions
It is also important to try to capture unintended changes, to understand the reasons for change,
and to interpret the changes. To do this you will also need to ask open ended quesions including
quesions which explore why and how changes have happened and what they mean to people (also
see Secion 9 and Annex 5 below). This may yield both quanitaive and qualitaive data.
Ideally you should collect informaion about the situaion before the project started (baseline data)
so you can see what diference the project has made (see “Secion 4: Overview and resources”
on page 37). If it is not possible to collect baseline data before your project starts you can
someimes collect it retrospecively e.g. by asking people to compare the situaion before and ater
but the data is likely to be more prone to error.
In the box overleaf we summarise some possible indicators relaing to the key M&E quesions
ideniied above:
7 Some M & E guides recommend that objecives, and hence indicators, are SMART (Speciic, Measurable, Atainable,
Relevant and Time-tabled). However, making all objecives measurable and atainable can be unduly limiing e.g. some
objecives may be aspiraional or longer term: or may involve qualitaive changes which cannot be easily quaniied.
Photo:
SEAD/Trapes
e

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Table 3 Examples of Indicator themes
Note: these are example of possible indicator themes, rather than precise indicators, and are by no
means a complete list. See Annex 3 for further examples.
Key issues/quesions Indicators: changes in ( + or -):
Issues/quesion internal to group(s)
Organisaional capacity/group
processes
Access to resources (human, inancial, technical); leadership,
vision and understanding of change; management (e.g.
clarity about aims, objecives, roles & responsibility; working
principles; adaptability); cost efeciveness; sustainability (e.g.
inance, and/or supporive framework for volunteers)
Cost efeciveness/eiciency Raio of cost (including volunteers’ ime) to outcomes (e.g.
amount of energy eiciency measures installed/energy
reducion achieved)
Joint or partnership working Percepions of value added from working together; early wins;
shared vision, objecives, strategy & working principles; clear
roles & responsibiliies; trust; recogniion of value of diferent
contribuions
Issues/quesions about outputs, outcomes and impacts
Relevance Numbers, percentage and demographic mix of project
paricipants; percepions of paricipants and wider community
about relevance of projects to their lives and needs
Efeciveness (interim outcomes and impacts )
Hearts & minds Individual and community aitudes/beliefs/values e.g. that
climate change is/is not caused by human acivity; or that
increasing resilience/reducing CO2 is/is not the right thing to
do
Individual agency/
empowerment
People’s beliefs that they can take meaningful acion and that
change is possible (e.g. might include moivaion, knowledge &
skills, intenion/commitment, capacity)
Behaviours/pracices More sustainable behaviours (e.g. closing windows, turning
of lights when not in use, drying laundry naturally rather than
tumble drying, using public transport rather than the car)
Community capacity/resilience Community resources (human, technical, and inancial); networks/
partnerships/collaboraions; residents access to and consumpion
of locally grown food, clean energy, water and other resources;
use of local currency or exchange schemes; number of local
businesses/social enterprises/jobs (see Annex three for further
examples)
Social capital Increased interacion between individuals, groups and sectors
in community, trust, pro-social & environmental norms
Support base/paricipaion in
aciviies/public support
Numbers of members/supporters paricipaion in iniiaives;
moivaions for paricipaion/non-paricipaion; trust in
community organisaion/movement
Paricipaion in and/or
inluence over local and
naional decision making and
policies
Involvement in public decision making (including access to info,
meaningful consultaion, responsiveness of decision makers to
local people); involvement in peiion/lobbying/campaigning
of naional government; changes in relevant policies (e.g.
the terms of debate; geing issue on policy agenda; policy
commitments to change)

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Impacts
Energy use & carbon emissions Household & community energy use & carbon emissions
Social well-being Health (e.g. relaing to warmer homes, acive lifestyles, healthier
food and connecion with other people)
Economic well being Household - Financial savings on bills, wages, economic security
new jobs; skills; access to resources/assets/markets; economic
security
Community – Assets, income stream, jobs created, skills/ training
opportuniies
Equity Distribuion of costs and beneits e.g. who beneits and who pays
for changes
Contribuion/
Atribuion
Percepions of a range of diferent stakeholders about the
community groups’ contribuion to changes (or randomised
control groups to track changes happening without intervenion
from projects or programmes)
NB. Tracking indicators on its own does not tell you what contribuions you have made to any
observed changes. To ind this out you will need to ask addiional quesions (see secion 9 below on
contribuion/atribuion).
8. Deciding how you will collect the informaion
Internal monitoring
For each indicator you will need to work out how you will collect the
informaion i.e. your informaion collecion methods (see “A step by step
guide to Monitoring and Evaluaion Secion 3: Informaion collecion
methods” on page 33). Generally it is preferable to collect data
from a range of internal and external sources. Some useful informaion
collecion methods for internal monitoring include:
• Internal records to track project aciviies, processes and output
indicators;
• Keeping records of relevant secondary informaion to track
changes in outcomes and impacts and accompany internal
records, such as policy changes, media coverage, relevant
surveys/databases
• Periodic group workshops, discussions, focus groups (including
group raings/ranking exercises and/or other visual techniques
such as ime lines, mapping, diagrams; other diagnosic tools)
• Periodic surveys (e.g. to assess aitudes, event feedbacks and/or
behaviour change)
• Use of automated household or community tools, modelled data
or conversion raios e.g. carbon calculators such as DECoRuM8
.
8 DECoRuM® is a GIS-based toolkit for carbon emission reducion planning with the capability to esimate current energy-related CO2 emissions from exising UK dwellings, aggregaing
them to a street, district, sub-urban, and city level.

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Table 4 Example of indicators & informaion collecion methods
Issue/quesion & indicators Informaion collecion method Frequency (including base
line)
Relevance
Numbers, percentage and
demographic mix of project
paricipants; percepions of
relevance by paricipants
Self-evaluaion
Paricipant quesionnaire
Community quesionnaire
Annually
Once at beginning of project
Every 3 years
Efeciveness
Agency; percepions of social
norms; household energy
behaviours
Paricipant quesionnaire At beginning & end of
programme
Impacts
Household energy use Meter readings Monthly
Household carbon emissions e.g. Quicksilver Calculator At beginning of programme
(for preceeding year) and at
end of programme
Community Energy Use Electricity Network operator if
available
Annually
Community Carbon Emissions e.g. DECoRuM mapping or
other community scale carbon
couning tools
Annually
Evaluaions
You can either conduct your own evaluaions or commission an independent external person to
do it for you. External evaluaions can be more useful as interviewees may be more likely to talk
openly to them, however they can be expensive unless they are conducted by funded academic
researchers (see the Transiion Research Network, and the Transiion Research Primer). External
evaluators can use the informaion collected by the internal monitoring system but may also
need to supplement this with other informaion collected from a range of internal and external
stakeholders e.g. from group workshops, semi structured interviews and/or surveys.
9. Assessing your contribuion/inluence
Your M&E may show posiive outcomes and impacts associated with your projects and programmes
but this may be atributable to other factors or actors (individuals or organisaions) rather than
your programme or projects. Therefore an important part of M&E is assessing the inluence or
contribuion your projects/aciviies have made to any observed outcomes or impacts.

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Randomised controls
For some academics and policy makers, the only objecive way to assess atribuion is through
surveys over a deined period of ime, which compare changes in the communiies taking part in
the project to changes in communiies who are not taking part in the project (either a randomised
or purposively selected control group). Any diferences in outcomes or impacts can then be argued
to have been caused by the project. However, this requires resources beyond the reach of many
community groups. Therefore, unless you are able to collaborate with academics (see the Transiion
Research Network9
and the Transiion research marketplace10
) or others, this might not be
possible. It can also raise some technical and ethical issues about the diiculty of inding control
communiies and/or withholding or denying support to control communiies. Alternaively, you
might be able to make some comparisons of your outcome and impact indicators with data from
long-term local and/or naional surveys/databases if you have used similar samples and indicators.
Retrospecive assessments
One alternaive to using longitudinal surveys and randomised controls is to select a random sample
of people from both a ‘project’ and ‘control’ community and ask them to retrospecively rate or
rank the inluence or impact of a range of selected factors/organisaions/individuals, including the
project, on any observed outcomes or impacts. This will not provide an objecive or staisically
signiicant assessment of your contribuion, and as the responses are subjecive may involve biases.
But, it will allow you to build an assessment based on the percepions of a range of stakeholders.
Another alternaive is to periodically (e.g. every few years) commission an independent evaluator/
facilitator to explore your contribuion to observed outcomes and impacts, such as through focus
groups, group workshops and/or interviews with a range of internal and external stakeholders (e.g.
from organisaion, community, local council, media, government etc). Again, this will not provide
an objecive assessment of your contribuion but will allow the evaluator to build an assessment
based on the percepions of a range of stakeholders. Some of the quesions you might want to ask
include:
• What changes have there been in recent years on X issue?
• Who were the key actors driving/blocking these changes?
• What were the key contextual factors driving/blocking these changes?
• What contribuion has Y organisaion/project has made to these changes?
• How inluenial has Y been compared to others, and why?
• What value added do you think Y brought to the issue?
9 htp://www.transiionresearchnetwork.org/
10 htp://www.transiionresearchnetwork.org/the-transiion-research-marketplace.html
Photo: Mike Grenville

16
Using atribuion factors
Another way is to ascribe atribuion factors to the observed outcomes and impacts. For example,
the Community Impact Modelling tool11
developed by CAG Oxfordshire ascribes an atribuion
factor of 100%, 50% and 0% to CO2
savings from community waste reducion projects based on
whether paricipants say that they took the acion purely as a result of the project, they were going
to take the acion but the project helped, or they were going to take the acion anyway.
10. Analysing and using the informaion
Informaion is only useful if it is analysed and put to good use. A key purpose of monitoring is to
support internal decision making and planning, so you need to ensure you periodically analyse,
assess, and actually use the informaion you collect.
Analysis
Some ips for analysing informaion include:
• Qualitaive informaion
Idenify categories, themes & data (this is called ‘coding’)
Interpret indings in relaion to research quesion
Watch out for unintended results & data that does not it your expectaions
• Quanitaive informaion
Calculate simple totals, averages, and percentages, and staisical tests (if appropriate)
• General
Check credibility, validity and reliability
Invite periodic external veriicaion/evaluaion
Using and Communicaing the Data
When you have analysed the data you could hold periodic internal meeings and/or organise a
speciic evaluaion workshop to share, discuss and interpret indings. You should use the data to
answer your iniial key quesions. You might also draw out learning for other stakeholders.
11 htp://www.cagoxfordshire.org.uk/impact-model

17
Internal learning
• What is working well and not so well, and why?
• What have we learnt about how to achieve change i.e. how plausible were our change
assumpions?
• What changes do we need to make to our change strategy, understanding of change, and
ways of working?
Learning for other stakeholders
• What are the lessons for other praciioners –e.g. other
communiies, local authoriies, intermediary or support
organisaions?
• What are the lessons for naional policy?
11. Communicaing the data
Depending on the purpose of your M&E it may also be important to
communicate the data to relevant stakeholders. This might involve:
• Deciding key audiences e.g. community group, community, donors, policy makers and the
media
• Tailoring and packaging the data to key stakeholders/audiences
• Convering data into graphs, pie charts etc
• Drawing out key lessons for key stakeholders/audiences
The informaion could then be incorporated into Annual reports (see the links below for examples),
or provide a useful background document to give people who want to know what your group does.
12. Ethics and Data Protecion
It is very important that you gain informed consent from research respondents/paricipants, ensure
their anonymity in the communicaion of research indings, and respect data protecion laws.
Sources
Adapted from Coe, J. and Mayne, R. (2008), Is your campaign making a diference? NCVO .
Transiion Iniiaive workshop Measuring and Evaluaing Resilience in Transiion, Hamilton House,
Stokes Crot, Bristol. May 21st 2012. htp://www.transiionresearchnetwork.org/connected-
communiies.html
Lamb, B. (2011) Campaigning for change: Learning from the United States. Campaigning
Efeciveness (London: NCVO), NCVO
Other reading/resources
Transiion Research Network Primer. Available online from htp://www.transiionresearchnetwork.
org/
Resources menioned, such as annual reports:
Low Carbon West Oxford: ‘Low Carbon Living: Power to Make it possible’ report – available from
htp://www.lowcarbonwestoxford.org.uk/index.php
Bristol Green Doors. See their evaluaion reports online here: htp://www.bristolgreendoors.org/
learning
Photo:
Mike
Grenville

18
Annex 1: Example of an ambiious and simpliied change pathway/
impact chain for a community group.

19
Annex 2: Example of acivity / output monitoring from Transiion
Town Totnes

20
Annex 3: Examples of Resilience Indicators from Transiion Town
Totnes Energy Descent Acion Plan
These indicators are extracted from the full Totnes Energy Descent Acion Plan12
, which is ‘a guide
to reducing our dependence on fossil fuels and reducing our carbon footprint over the next 20
years’ (i.e. up to around 2021).
Health and wellbeing
• Depression trends / rates
• Obesity rates in children & adults
• Frequency of visits to the doctor
• The proporion of babies exclusively breasfed for six months or more
• Acres of land used to culivate medicinal herbs
• Average age of dying
• Number of hours spent walking
• Number of meals per capita eaten alone by over 65s
Food
• The percentage of the populaion with basic food producion skills
• The percentage of the populaion who feel conident in cooking with fresh produce
• The percentage of food consumed locally which has been also grown locally
• The number of people who feel they have access to good advice, skills retraining in
basic food producion
• The percentage of land (agricultural & urban) under uilisaion for food producion
• Rates of obesity and chronic heart disease
• The average body mass index
Biodiversity
• Hectares of deciduous woodland managed for nature conservaion
• Monitoring of Red Shanked Carder bumblebee populaion1.
• The total km of hedgerows.
• Number of maing pairs of oters (Operaion Oter at Darington / Devon Wildlife Trust).
• Numbers of Skylarks in the district.
• Monitoring of key bat species.
• % of households with bird tables and bat boxes.
• Cleanliness of main waterways in the area.
• Number of people acively involved in nature conservaion.
Energy
• % of houses with insulaion to Passivhaus standards
• % of energy produced from local renewable sources to meet local (esimated) demand
• % of buildings with solar hot water collectors
• Number of people who feel well informed about energy issues
• Number of people concerned about energy security/climate change
• Reaching the Government target of reducing carbon emissions by at least 20% by 2020 (80%
by 2050)
Housing
• Percentage of houses that have been retroited to maximum possible standard.
• Number of second homes that have been let though the ‘Homes for All’ scheme.
• Number of houses with solar hot water panels installed.
12 htp://totnesedap.org.uk/book/introducion/ and htp://totnesedap.org.uk/search/resilience+indicators

21
• Number of builders that have undertaken the ‘Construcion in Transiion’ training course,
which introduces them to a range of natural building materials and techniques.
• Heat emited from buildings – as measured by an infrared scan from the sky.
• Trends in fuel poverty.
• Average amount of energy produced by buildings in Totnes and District.
Economy
• The percentage of economic leakage out of the community
• The percentage the local community spend on locally procured business, goods and services.
• Percentage of major employers in the community that are locally owned
• Niche markets (in which unique opportuniies exist) have been ideniied in the community
that take advantage of community strengths.
• The relaive value by percentage of community owned major
assets for the economic and social beneit of the community.
• The number of Totnes Pounds in circulaion.
• Degree to which people perceive an openness to alternaive
forms of earning a living
Transport
• % of people who walk for 10 minutes at least daily
• % of children who cycle or walk to school
• % of people who cycle or walk to work
• No of people with access to a local bus
• Distance driven each year
• Overall split of journeys between walking, cycling, public
transport and car
Waste
• Overall waste volumes.
• % of agricultural and sewerage waste to anaerobic digesion
• Reducion in packaging on goods
Inner Transiion indicators
Personal well being
• In general I am saisied with my life (Footnote: This is the quesion used in the World Values
Survey13
and in other internaional surveys measuring happiness, also used in Rob Hopkin’s
survey with 94% agreeing or agreeing strongly).
• Quesions from the “Your recent feelings” secion of the Happy Planet Index14
could be used
to assess personal well being
• I feel conident that in the future my needs and those of my loved ones will be met (Agree
strongly to disagree strongly) [Similar to Rob’s quesion “I am opimisic about the future of
my community”]
• On the whole I feel safe in my community
Connecions with other people, nature and spiritual life
• I feel included and welcome in my community
• I know most/all of my neighbours
• How oten do you spend ime outside in natural or green spaces?
• Do you consider yourself to be a spiritual person? [From Rob Hopkin’s 2009 survey]
Availability of Support
• I can ind support that is appropriate when I need it (from family, friends, community
services or other organisaions)
13 htp://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/
14 htp://www.happyplaneindex.org/

22
Annex 4: Headline indicators developed by Cheshire West and
Chester Council (courtesy of Peter Bulmer)
Feedback about these indicators is very welcome, please email Peter.Bulmer@cheshirewestandchester.gov.uk
Further info:
htp://www.claspinfo.org/sites/default/iles/Climate%20Resilient%20Communiies%20inal%20project%20report.pdf
Themaic areas for resilience informaion/data to be collected:
Is your Community...
...being resource wise?
…cuing your consumpion of resources and encouraging others to do the same?
…adoping high energy eiciency, water eiciency and resource eiciency?
…maximising the use of local, renewable energy?
…minimising waste and prevening polluion?
...reducing high carbon travel?
…using, promoing and planning for low carbon access/travel? E.g. walking & cycling,
home-working, mobile services, ICT/video-conferencing, online faciliies, local muli-service
centres, demand-responsive public transport and alternaive fuels
...taking a longer term approach?
…taking into account the needs of future generaions including miigaing and adaping to
climate change and preparing for ‘peak oil’?
…ensuring the genuine sustainability and success of what you do by pursuing integrated,
lasing ‘win-win-win’ outcomes for society, the economy and the environment?
...supporing thriving low carbon economies?
…boosing compeiiveness, business markets and employment opportuniies by supporing
a low carbon approach to innovaion, enterprise and economic development in ways which
meet local workforce needs? E.g. local renewable energy, sustainable construcion and
renovaion, environmental technologies and local/regional supply chains
...developing sustainability learning and skills?
…developing your own sustainability learning and skills?
…explaining and promoing the ‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘how’ of sustainability to others?
…supporing ‘systemic thinking’, professional skills and leadership for sustainable soluions?
...improving physical and mental well-being?
…supporing physical and mental well-being – including your own! – through healthy,
balanced lifestyles; healthy homes and workplaces; clean, safe and green environments; and
supporive and inclusive communiies?
...improving equality in meeing basic needs?
…tackling inequaliies (prioriising those who are most in need) in access to:
- decent, afordable, adaptable and sustainable housing?
- essenial goods & services? - adequate income levels?
- safe and saisfying employment, learning, and leisure opportuniies?
...using local and ethical goods & services?
…using locally and ethically sourced goods and services - and strengthening local/regional
supply chains - to boost our local economies and support people in other parts of the world?
...enhancing local disinciveness and diversity including biodiversity?
…protecing and enhancing our natural environment & biodiversity and culture & heritage
and celebraing diversity and disinciveness?
...helping everyone to join in public decision-making?
…supporing wider, more informed paricipaion in public and community decision-making
to foster ciizenship and involve people in the soluions to local and global challenges?

23
Annex 5: Dealing with unpredictable and complex change
Although linear change pathways can help simplify our thinking, plan our acions and design M&E,
change can come about in nonlinear, complex and unpredictable ways. Below we draw out some of
the implicaions of complex and unpredictable change for project planning and M&E.
a. Seek out simplicity
There are oten muliple factors/actors driving or constraining change so focus on those that ‘makes
a diference’. Hence the need for clear aims objecives and a robust and focused strategy based on
a theory of change or change hypothesis. This needs to be balanced against willingness to learn and
adapt strategies (see below).
b. Look for the paterns not just details
As well as asking external stakeholders about your contribuion to observed change (see below)
also ask them big picture quesions which can help with your future planning – i.e. what are the
key factors/actors driving/constraining change, what are the opportuniies for change, how do
they think change can best be achieved in the current context, what value added can your group/
movement bring?
Similarly when you sit down to discuss your M & E data internally don’t get lost in too much detail,
rather make sure you use it to answer the big picture quesions:
• What is working well and not so well, and why?
• What have we learnt about how to achieve the desired change i.e. how plausible were our
change assumpions?
• What changes do we need to make to our change strategy, understanding of change, and
ways of working?
c. Paricipaion and delegaion
Hierarchical structures are not well suited to turbulence and complexity as they hamper the capacity
to respond to change through coninual innovaion and adapion. So ensure the paricipaion of
front line people in project planning and M&E, and delegate control where appropriate. This will
help ensure informaion is relevant, imely and useful for the group or movement.
d. Contribuion versus atribuion
Change is oten the result of many actors acing in diferent ways. So focus on learning what
value-added your group/network brings to the issue rather than spending a long ime trying to
‘prove’ atribuion. In other words the key quesion is not so much ‘can change be atributed
to x organisaion’ as ‘what contribuion has organisaion x made to change, and what added or
complementary value did it bring’.
e. Learning and adaptaion
In unpredictable contexts it is even more important to be able to scan the environment and
anicipate and plan for new opportuniies. Make sure you build in short term, as well as longer
term, indicators of success so learning can happen quickly.
And inally use your M & E to also measure how good you are at learning and adaping to change
i.e. how good is your intelligence and interpretaion of intelligence?
Adapted from Coe, J. and Mayne, R. (2008), Is your campaign making a diference? NCVO .

24
Section 2: Planning your Monitoring and Evaluation
This Secion is designed to help you plan your Monitoring and Evaluaion (M&E) as part of the
resources from the Monitoring and Evaluaion for Sustainable Communiies project. You can ind the
accompanying resources and download this secion as a Word document here: htp://www.geog.
ox.ac.uk/research/technologies/projects/monitoringandevaluaion.html
Designing your M&E is an iteraive process. Try illing in as much as you can to begin with, you may
well ind you need to return to and amend earlier steps.
Introducion – what is Monitoring & Evaluaion (M&E)?
Monitoring is the internal collecion and analysis of informaion about a project or programme.
Evaluaion is the periodic retrospecive assessment of a completed project or programme and is
oten conducted by external independent evaluators.
This guide focuses mainly on how to design an internal monitoring system, although the data
collected should also be useful for end of project evaluaions.
Explanatory notes and examples can be found in Secions 1, 3, & 4
1. Decide why you want to do M&E (beneits)
The purpose of our M&E is to:
Photo:
Mim
Saxl
Photography

25
2. Decide your guiding principles
The guiding principles of our M&E will be:
3. Decide which programmes/projects you want to assess
What programme/project? Monitoring and/or end-of-
term evaluaion
When?

26
4. Decide who to involve in the diferent stages of your M&E
We will include the following stakeholders in our M&E framework:
Internal stakeholders
(e.g. volunteers, staf,
members, supporters)
Wider community
(e.g. residents, other
local organisaions,
wider movement)
External stakeholders
(e.g. local residents,
University funders,
government etc)
Design of key
quesions/ issues
Design of detailed
framework e.g.
indicators and data
collecion methods
Implementaion e.g.
who is collecing the
data and how
Analysis
Communicaion of
indings

27
5. Decide the key issues and quesions you need to invesigate
We will focus our monitoring and evaluaion on the following issues and quesions:
Issue Quesions
Organisaional capacity/group processes (how
well are we working together in relaion to e.g.
needed resources, leadership, management,
cost efeciveness, sustainability?).
Joint working (how well are we working
with others in relaion to e.g. partnerships;
movement building alliances, coaliions,
poliical allies; disseminaing learning?)
Relevance (how relevant are our projects to
diferent secions of our community?)
Efeciveness (are we achieving our
objecives?)
Impact (what is our impact on people’s lives
and/or the environment?)
Contribuion (what contribuion have we made
to outcomes & impacts compared to other
actors/factors?)
Other

28
6. Clarify your aims, objecive and change pathway (impact chain)
Our aims, objecives, aciviies and change assumpions for the relevant programmes or projects
are (and/or draw an impact chain diagram):
Aims/impacts (The desired impacts we want to have on people’s lives or the environment e.g.
improved well-being, fairer & more inclusive community, reduced carbon emissions).
Objecives/outcomes (The changes we need to make to achieve our aims/impacts e.g. increased
personal agency; more sustainable behaviours; increased community capacity; supporive and fair
government policies).
Aciviies (The programme/project aciviies we plan to undertake to achieve our objecives and
aims e.g. community engagement/awareness; acion/learning groups to reduce domesic energy
use; community food, transport and waste reducion projects; joint working; policy inluencing).
Our key assumpions about how we will achieve this change are:

29
7. Idenify what informaion you need to collect
Indicators
Key issue/quesions Indicators ( + or -)
Organisaional capacity/group process
Joint working
Relevance
Efeciveness (outcomes)
Impacts
Contribuion/
Atribuion
Other

30
Open quesions
We will include the following open ended quesions to track e.g. unintended changes; understand
‘why’ and ‘how’ change happens (including our contribuion and the plausibility of our change
assumpions); and/or understand people’s experiences of change.
8. Decide how you will collect your informaion
We will use the following informaion collecion methods (see Secion 3)
Issue/quesion/indicator Informaion collecion method Frequency

31
9. Decide how you will assess your contribuion/inluence
We will assess our contribuion to the observed changes in the following way:
10. Decide how to analyse and use the informaion
We will analyse the informaion in the following ways:
What When How and who
We will periodically discuss and assess the informaion internally:
Quesions When Who
Internal learning - to assess
& adapt project design &
strategy
External - to draw out lessons
for other praciioners;
inluence policy etc

32
11. Decide how to communicate the informaion
The key audiences we will communicate our indings to will be:
(e.g. community group , community, donors, policy makers)
We will tailor and present the informaion for diferent stakeholders and audiences through:
(e.g. using graphs, pie chart etc. where possible to simplify the data)
12. Ethics and Data Protecion
We will gain informed consent from research respondents/paricipants in the following ways:
We will ensure the anonymity of research paricipants by:
We will respect data protecion laws by ensuring that:
Sources:
Adapted from Coe, J. and Mayne, R. (2008) Is your campaign making a diference?, NCVO

33
Secion 3: Informaion collecion methods
Internal records
What it is - using internal records to track project aciviies, processes and output indicators such as
numbers and demography of project members, supporters, paricipants:
• Type of informaion – mainly quanitaive
• Beneits – can be useful for tracking aciviies and outputs
• Limits – informaion about aciviies and outputs does not tell you what diference
you are making
Examples:
See Secion 4, and sample demographic monitoring forms on Secion 5.
Tracking relevant secondary informaion
What it is - keeping records of relevant secondary informaion to track changes in outcomes and
impacts and accompanying internal records e.g. policy changes, media coverage, relevant surveys/
data bases.
• Type of informaion- mainly quanitaive
• Beneits – useful for providing evidence of external changes and comparisons e.g. of
local indicators against naional indicators. Useful if you do not have the resources to
carry out your own interviews or surveys (see below).
• Limits – secondary sources may not provide completely relevant or comparable
informaion about the precise issue, neighbourhood or people you are interested in.
It also oten needs to be supplemented by qualitaive methods to assess your
contribuion to the observed outcomes i.e. by asking why and how change
happened.

34
Group workshops/ focus groups
What it is - discussions with groups of internal and/or external stakeholders to explore percepions
and opinions about speciic quesions, issues or change and/or to get feedback on research indings.
Might involve plenary or working group discussions, and/or using various visual, ranking/raing or
diagrammaic exercises (see below). Whereas workshops can be any size and are oten interacive,
focus group tend to be smaller, focussed and more structured.
• Type of informaion – mainly qualitaive but can collecive quanitaive data too (e.g.
through group rankings or raing exercises)
• Beneits - can be a useful way of geing opinions from a range of people and
generaing in depth discussion.
• Limits - Requires skilled facilitators. Group power dynamics may prevent some
people from speaking up, although breaking into small groups followed by plenary
sessions when everyone comes together again can help. Paricipants may just say
what they think interviewer/facilitator wants to hear. The answers may be diicult
to analyse and aggregate, and cannot be used to generalise to the wider populaion.
Also, quite diicult to do random sampling for focus groups so indings may not be
generalisable. Transcribing discussions can take ime.
Examples of tools for group workshops might include: semi structured or open ended quesions;
group raings or rankings, visual techniques, ime lines, mappings, diagrams (see end for examples).
Examples: see Secion 4.

35
Short survey
What it is – a writen quesionnaire with idenical quesions deined before interviewing begins.
Given to all informants to track changes in outcome indicators, impact indicators and/or assess
aitudes, knowledge, behaviours intenions, etc. Most surveys involve a list of closed quesions
with a choice of possible responses, ranking and/or raings. However, open ended quesions can
also be asked. Informants are chosen in advance as representaive (or purposive) samples of the
wider populaion1
. A survey could be used at the end of a community event or a course, or at the
start and end of a project, to assess changes in aitudes/intenions/behaviours/energy use etc. It
could also be used with members of the wider community or external stakeholders to ind out their
percepions of the project.
Type of informaion – mainly quanitaive but some qualitaive informaion is possible.
• Beneits– Most suited for answering what/how many/when/who quesions, but
can also ask why/how quesions. It can provide a reliable and credible source
of quanitaive informaion, and can be inluenial with decision makers and funders
• Limits– Less efecive in exploring why/how quesions than group workshops or
semi-structured interviews. No possibility of altering the quesions on the basis
of new informaion. Quesionnaires look simple but can actually be diicult
to design and analyse properly. For examples of quesions, search the Survey
Quesion Bank (htp://surveynet.ac.uk/sqb/ ). If people cannot read or write
someone has to go through the quesionnaire with them, which increases ime spent
and reduces the numbers reached.
Examples: See Secion 5 (LCWO household survey) and Secion 4.4 (events and surveys).
Automated tools/models/conversion raios
What it is - a method to esimate outcomes and impacts, such as
household or community energy use, carbon emissions, health beneits
using modelled data and/or conversion raio. This may involve an online
survey which people can ill in individually (e.g. Imeasure); an excel
programme which a project worker helps people ill in (Quicksilver);
a community modelling tool where an academic or expert collects
relevant data and enters it into the model (e.g. Decorum); or project
workers applying conversion raios to their observed outputs, and
outcomes.
Type of informaion – quanitaive
• Beneits– Provides credible quanitaive evidence of outcomes
and impacts which can be inluenial with decision makers and
funders
• Limits– Requires people to ind and enter electricity, gas
and/or travel data, which can be diicult and ime
consuming.
Examples: See Secion 4 (Imeasure, Quicksilver, Decorum, CAG
Community Impact Model).
1 Large surveys can be interpreted using staisical analysis, including regression analysis to inform correlaions and/or causal links between project aciviies, outcomes, and impacts.
They are generally validated by probability criteria (ie the likelihood that the paterns observed arose by chance. A survey can be done at individual, household or organisaion level.
When the survey is repeated periodically over ime it is called a longitudinal study. When a longitudinal survey samples a cross-secion of people/organisaions/households over ime,
this is called a panel survey. When it samples a group which share a common characterisic over ime it is known as a cohort study

36
Semi Structured Interviews
What it is – parially structured interviews with individuals oten conducted face to face (although
it can be done over the phone) to explore percepions and experiences of changes and/or
explanaions of change. Core quesions are ideniied before the interview but can be modiied,
or new quesions introduced, during the interview. New informants may be ideniied during the
course of the interviews (snowballing). Data is analysed by comparing what diferent informants say
about speciic themes or quesions. Findings are validated by comparing it with informaion from
diferent sources.
Beneits – Useful for answering ‘Why/how’ quesions, and exploring people’s percepions/aitudes.
Can address ‘what’ quesions if rankings/raings introduced but more limited than quanitaive
surveys
Limits - Paricipants may just say what they think interviewer wants to hear. The answers may be
diicult to analyse and aggregate, and cannot be used to generalise to the wider populaion.
Examples: see Secion 5.

37
A Step-by-Step Guide to Monitoring and Evaluaion
Secion 4: Overview and resources
The process of Monitoring and Evaluaion (M&E) can be muli- purpose. The trick is to select the
tools you need, combine them, and know how to use them when necessary.
This guide brings together a selecion of tools and resources that community groups working on
climate change, energy and local resilience have found useful, together with links and relecions.
Whilst we have selected resources that are most perinent for M&E, they can be used for other
purposes. The selecion is by no means exhausive, so suggesions and addiions are most welcome.
1. The best of what’s around
There are many places online where resources for community groups are available and you’ll ind a
number of M&E resources amongst them. Table 1 shows a selecion of them.
Table 1: Resources for community groups
Name Descripion URL/source
The Source,
Centre for
Sustainable
Energy
Gathered selecion of top
links, toolkits and resources for
community energy projects,
including their PlanLoCal
resources.
htp://www.cse.org.uk/thesource/
browse/using-less-energy-11/tools-and-
calculators-16
Low Carbon Hub
Resource Library
Collecion of tools for community
energy projects.
htp://www.lowcarbonhub.org/resources/
resource-library
Community
Energy Online
(DECC)
Overview of guides and links
for community energy projects.
Contains evaluaion reports, but
litle on conducing M&E.
htps://www.gov.uk/community-
energy#community-energy-toolkits
CSE: PlanLoCal A suite of resources which
support communiies and groups
planning for low carbon living.
htp://www.planlocal.org.uk
Photo:
Mim
Saxl
Photography

38
2. Start where you are:
Surveying the concerns of your community is useful in many ways. It
can be used as an outreach and engagement tool, encouraging the
involvement of the wider community. It can help you understand local
aitudes towards climate change, energy, peak oil, resilience and
other ideas in the community. It can help steer and frame your group’s
approach, and provide useful evidence to help you measure your
impact.
2.1 Small Scale
Table 2.1: Examples of surveys at a village and town scale
Sustainable
Wallingford
This group surveyed community aitudes
towards climate and energy. This generated
ideas that the group could use in their ongoing
work.
They were also involved in the Greening
Campaign1
, which uses pledges to encourage
householders, and can generate data about
the carbon saving if the pledges are carried
out.
htp://www.sustainablewallingford.
org/projects/greening-campaign/
Sustainable
Blewbury /
Blewbury
Energy
Iniiaive
This group conducted a householder survey
of housing types and the carbon footprint of
their village. Along with a thermal imaging
study, this was used as a baseline to assess the
impact of their work on household energy, and
to provide informaion to householders about
their current energy consumpion.
www.blewbury.co.uk/energy/BEI.
htm
Transiion
Town
Totnes
Ongoing research using a survey to feed useful
informaion into their Energy Descent Acion
Plan.
See The Transiion Companion
secion on Measurement (Hopkins,
2011:109).
2.2 Medium Scale
In-depth assessments which give an overview of
the exising and potenial capaciies and needs
of an area can be powerful tools which bring
together diverse actors, and can provide insight
into appropriate aciviies and projects. They also
give a baseline against which to measure larger
scale changes.

39
Community
Resilience
Mapping
‘Transiion Hereford created the ‘Mappa
Sustainability’, modelled on the thirteenth
century Mappa Mundi. People were invited
to atach sickers showing what they are
doing, what else is happening where they
live, and their visions.’
htp://www.transiionnetwork.org/tools/
connecing/meaningful-maps
Energy
Resilience
Assessment
(ERA)
ERA is a tool developed by Transiion
Training and Consuling (TT&C). It can help
show that, in a ime of rising volaile energy
prices, a business that relies on fossil fuels
is highly vulnerable – and this is paricularly
the case with liquid fossil fuels.
htp://www.transiionnetwork.org/tools/
connecing/energy-resilience-assessment
2.3 Larger scale
Note: these more in-depth projects are best atempted as part of a wider partnership which can
generate wider ownership of the project, and the momentum and capacity to put the ideas into acion.
Table 2.3: Examples of in-depth baseline research
REconomy
Local
Economic
Blueprint
Three reports which esimated the
potenial value of key sectors of the local
economy in Totnes: Renewable Energy,
Food and Retroit.
htp://www.transiiontowntotnes.org/
groups/reconomybusinessnetwork/
economic-blueprint
Foodprining
Oxford: how
to feed a city
Report which explores what we eat
and where it comes from, how much
land, water and energy is required in its
producion, and what greenhouse gas
emissions are involved.
htp://www.oxfordmarin.ox.ac.uk/
publicaions/view/1004
Oxfordshire
Capacity
Study
Study which examines the potenial of
renewable energy sources in Oxfordshire.
htp://www.lowcarbonhub.org/wp-
content/uploads/2012/06/Oxfordshire-
Capacity-Study.pdf
PlanLoCaL PlanLoCaL is a suite of resources which
aims to support communiies and groups
‘planning for low carbon living’.
htp://www.planlocal.org.uk
Table 2.2: Examples of medium scale assessment
3. Community and household footprining
Resources that assess the carbon footprint of householders and the wider community can be
valuable engagement and communicaion tools, providing feedback to paricipants. Some can be
used online and form the basis of a conversaion which will provide the householder with a detailed
breakdown of their footprint, together with ips and ideas for reducing it. If you use them at the
beginning and end of a project, and record the acions taken, they become powerful M&E tools.
Most of the tools aggregate results, and give results at a project, neighbourhood or community
scale.

40
Name Scale Descripion URL/Source
Quicksilver
carbon
calculator
Household
and
community
energy
The Quicksilver calculator provides a
detailed breakdown of an individual’s carbon
emissions from home energy, lifestyle and
travel. It can be used at an individual or
community level.
htp://www.lowcarbonhub.org/
resource/supporing-greener-
living
Act on CO2
Household Online carbon calculator for individual
households, links to ips etc.
htp://carboncalculator.direct.
gov.uk/index.html
Community
Carbon
Calculator -
Ashton Hayes
going carbon
neutral and
University of
Chester
Household
and
community
University of Chester developed a
community carbon calculator and conduct
ongoing research with Ashton Hayes Going
Carbon Neutral.
htp://www.goingcarbonneutral.
co.uk/community-carbon-
calculator-un
Fuel poverty
calculator
Household
and
community
scale
This Excel-based tool can be used to
determine whether an individual household
is in fuel poverty according to both the old
and new deiniions.
htp://www.cse.org.uk/news/
view/1757
CSE’s Housing
Assessment
Tool
Household
and
community
This Excel tool enables community groups
to analyse data about their local housing
stock and produce energy saving reports for
householders.
htp://www.cse.org.uk/
resources/toolkits
Imeasure
Home Energy
and Carbon
Monitoring
Calculator
Household
and
community
energy (gas,
electricity,
oil)
All you have to do is record your gas,
electricity and oil meter readings. iMeasure
uses local weather data to accurately assess
energy eiciency and saving potenial year-
on-year. The household level is free to use.
Community groups or organisaions working
with households on energy saving can
manage a group of households and access
members’ energy data (anonymised or fully
shared depending on the permission given by
the householder) for a small fee.
htp://www.imeasure.org.uk
EST
Community
Carbon
Footprint
Tool
Household
and
community
This tool measures carbon emissions from
your home, appliances and travel, gives
recommended carbon saving acions, and
update proiles to show savings. With 10% or
more of the community paricipaing it can
aggregate data to assess community carbon
footprint.
htp://www.
greencommuniiescc.org.uk/
Default.aspx
Transport
Direct
Individual
transport
journeys
Website allows you to enter journey imes,
and compare carbon emissions for journeys
within the UK.
htp://www.transportdirect.
info/Web2/JourneyPlanning/
JourneyEmissionsCompare.
aspx?&repeaingloop=Y
DECoRuM Community DECoRuM is a GIS-based botom–up model
for couning, cosing and reducing energy-
related CO2 emissions from UK dwellings.
htp://www.brookes.ac.uk/
business-and-employers/new-
technologies/decorum%C2%AE
Table 3: Community and household footprining tools

41
4. Events and surveys
Many groups run events, so it is useful to gather feedback, and ind out what impact they had on
paricipants or visitors. Table 4 brings together a range of resources to help you do this.
Table 4: Resources for monitoring events
CAG
Community
Impact
Model
This model quaniies the impact of
community acion - from waste diverted and
carbon emissions reduced to cost savings for
local authoriies and individual consumers.
Can be used at events and aciviies to build
up a cumulaive account of impact.
htp://www.cagoxfordshire.org.uk/
data-portal
Open Eco
Homes
Events
Green Open Homes have a range of feedback
forms for these events.
htp://www.greenopenhomes.net/
support-for-organisers/monitoring-and-
evaluaion
M&E
Handout #5
Examples of survey quesions and monitoring
forms that have been used at community
events and interviews.
See Secion 5 or
htp://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/
research/technologies/projects/
monitoringandevaluaion_handout5.
pdf
Photo:
Mim
Saxl
Photography

42
5. Group processes
Tools for assessing your group’s aciviies
whether you’re achieving your goals, and what
may be missing.
Table 5: Tools for group processes
‘Dognosic’
Diagnosic
Tool,
Transiion
Network
Tool to support relecing and
learning about the strengths and
weaknesses of a Transiion Iniiaive.
htp://www.transiionnetwork.org/stories/ann-
owen/2012-09/thrive-whats-it-all-about
Email Transiion Training for copies:
htp://www.transiionnetwork.org/training
Open-Ended
Sentences,
Appreciaive
Inquiry
Quesions to use in pairs, to
encourage a range of feedback.
See 8.1 and 8.2 below
Efecive
Groups
Resource
A whole host of resources for groups
to help them in being efecive and
brilliant.
htp://www.transiionnetwork.org/training
Timeline Template used by EVALOC when
reviewing the group’s aciviies.
See secion 8.3 below, and
advice/2012/10/09/evaluaing-learning-the-
next-steps
Roles
Mapping
A tool used by EVALOC to assess
what roles you and other partner
organisaions are performing within
the community, and idenify gaps.
advice/2012/10/09/evaluaing-learning-the-
next-steps
Transiion
Towns Totnes
relecion
For an inspiraional look at
celebraing the acions of a project,
and relecion on ‘how are we
doing?’ look at Transiion Town
Totnes’ ive year anniversary
celebraions.
htp://transiionculture.org/2011/09/06/happy-
birthday-tt-tools-for-stopping-to-ask-how-are-
we-doing/
Acivist skills
– the novice
– ninja line
Exercise for assessing the skills and
knowledge in the room. This exercise
could be adapted to many other
situaions, and be used for large and
small groups / meeings.
htp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbqJ9sZxDrg

43
6. Other online sources of evaluaion materials and approaches
There are many sources of approaches and background informaion about monitoring and
evaluaion, which are listed below.
Table 6: Online sources of evaluaion materials and approaches
Community
‘how to’ tools
A selecion of online resources which could
help make your online/computer-based data
collecion more eicient. These include ‘storify’,
creaing quick surveys for tablet computers.
htp://www.communityhowto.com/
tools/measure-outcomes-impact
Communiies
Living
Sustainably
Resources
A learning hub and network of resources for the
Communiies Living Sustainably projects.
htp://www.
communiieslivingsustainably.org.uk
Scoish
Climate
Challenge
Fund
There are many resources referred to on this
site, both on- and oline
htp://www.
evaluaionsupportscotland.org.uk
Monitoring
and
Evaluaion:
a guide for
community
projects
Short and accessible M&E guide. htp://www.cph.org.uk/wp-content/
uploads/2013/02/Monitoring-and-
evaluaion-a-guide-for-community-
projects.pdf
Prove It
Toolkit
A broad overview and some useful tools for
project appraisals. Covers the same ground as
the M&E guide above.
htp://www.proveit.org.uk/project_
relecion.html
Evaluaion
Toolbox
Good online research resources, focused around
community sustainability engagement. Some of
the examples are very Australian-focused.
www.evaluaiontoolbox.net.au
Is Your
Campaign
Making a
Diference?
(Book)
Coe, J. and Mayne, R., Is your campaign making a
diference? NCVO, 2008.
htp://www.ncvo.org.uk/component/
redshop/themes/5-campaigning/
P53-is-your-campaign-making-a-
diference
Insightshare
Paricipatory
Video
Paricipatory Video can make Monitoring and
Evaluaion (M&E) engaging, compelling and
fun. It is perfect for community groups, NGOs
and other bodies seeking an authenic and
paricipatory means of learning from their
projects and intervenions.
htp://www.insightshare.org/browse/
category/monitoring-evaluaion also
book available online from:
htp://www.insightshare.org/pv/pv-
nutshell

44
7. Designing survey quesions
This table contains descripions and links to resources for designing quesions, and inding out
where else similar quesions have been asked.
Table 7: Resources to support surveys
Survey Quesion Bank, and
UK Data service
If you are planning a survey and would
like to see what type of quesions have
been asked previously, this is a great
resource. Search using keywords, and
you’ll ind a list of survey quesions,
plus the survey they originated from.
This may be useful if you would like to
compare your results to larger surveys.
htp://surveynet.ac.uk/sqb/ and
htp://ukdataservice.ac.uk
Low Carbon Communiies
Challenge Household
surveys
The GkNOP evaluaion report for
Totnes’ ‘Transiion Streets’ Low Carbon
Communiies Challenge Programme
contains a list of their quesions, which
are really useful.
htp://www.transiiontogether.
org.uk/wp-content/
uploads/2012/07/LCCCBaselineR
esearchMiniReport%E2%80%93T
otnes.pdf
htp://www.
socialresearchmethods.
net/kb/index.php
Social Research Methods
Knowledge Base
The Knowledge Base is a useful online
resource for all kinds of social research
methods, containing useful info on
survey research, including designing
quesions.
htp://www.
socialresearchmethods.net/kb/
index.php and for surveys: htp://
www.socialresearchmethods.
net/kb/survey.php
Survey Monkey If you are using Survey Monkey for
online surveys, do look at their ips.
htp://help.surveymonkey.com/
aricles/en_US/kb/Wriing-
Survey-Quesions-Tips-for-
efecive-and-relevant-quesions
8. Group evaluaion tools
Many diferent tools can be used as part of group evaluaions. Some are more suitable for pairs or
small groups, while others are more visual and are therefore useful to prompt discussion, quesions
and relecion.
8.1 Open-ended sentences
Open-ended sentences are a great way to get people talking and listening in pairs. Ideally done as
a group of open ended sentences, allow around 5 minutes for each sentence, so 15 minutes for a
group of three.
Write some parial sentences up on a lipchart. In pairs ask one person to read out the sentence,
then coninue, talking about whatever is uppermost in their mind. The second person just listens,

45
unil 2 minutes is up, then they swap
roles, with the second person staring the
sentence and the irst person listening.
Some example sentences which focus on
group relecion and evaluaion could be:
‘The most rewarding part of my
involvement in this group has been….’
‘The aspects of the group I ind
challenging are ….’
‘The acivity that would most sustain me
over the next year would be…’
You can also ask paricipants to relect
on what they found saisfying. To get a
lavour of the types of things people have
most enjoyed, you could ask for people to
feed back a few of their relecions, and
ask for a show of hands if this resonates
with others in the room. (Source: adapted
from Macy and Young Brown (1998) ‘Coming Back to Life’ (iii).
8.2 Appreciaive Inquiry - quesions useful for relecion
Relecing on events and paricipaion is about learning what contributed to successes and failures.
‘Appreciaive Inquiry’ (or AI) is a method of acion research that focuses on asking open and
energising quesions, as well as on the assets of a project and what moivates paricipants. By doing
so, it can help to moivate paricipants and organisers to do more of what is working well. It is
important to look at what has not gone according to plan, but to do it in a non-judgemental way. It
is not about blame, it is about learning how to do things more efecively.
For more informaion see this overview on AI. Here are some illuminaing AI quesions which can
give you a lavour of the approach
(source: www.design.umn.edu/about/intranet/documents/AppreciativeInquiry-AskingPowerfulQuestions.pdf):
• What would it take to create change on this issue?
• What could happen that would enable you/us to feel fully engaged and energised about the
issue/our situaion?
• What’s possible here and who cares? (rather than “What’s wrong here and who’s
responsible?”)
• What needs our immediate atenion going forward?
• How can we support each other in taking the next steps? What unique contribuion
can we each make?
• What seed might we plant together today that could make the most diference to the future
of (the project)?
With any luck, by enabling people to come together to share their successes and relect on all
that has been achieved, what starts as a monitoring and evaluaion process can become a ime of
celebraion and a renewing of energies and enthusiasm for the tasks ahead.

46
9. Visual tools for discussion
The tools below have been recently used in focus group aciviies as part of the EVALOC research
project (www.evaloc.org.uk).
9.1 Project imeline
Timelines are a simple structure for lising your group’s events over the past year. The following
categories can be useful, but feel free to add others.
• Overall projects / intervenions (red)
• Community engagement (orange)
• Group Process (e.g. members of staf leaving, funding proposals submited) (green)
• Locally relevant aciviies (blue)
• Disseminaion / networking / policy inluencing (purple)
Beforehand, ask one of your group to list all your events, aciviies and other work over the year
in preparaion for discussion. Someimes just looking at the imeline can be enough for group
members to realise how much they’ve achieved.
Set aside 10 – 15 minutes to look over the imeline as a group, relect on the aciviies, and annotate
with Post-its. Some quesions which might be helpful in promoing discussion are: What were the
highlights? What required a lot of efort? What didn’t work so well? What was energising and fun?
What produced efecive outcomes? What led to something new? What’s missing?

47
10. Roles mapping
In the EVALOC research project (www.evaloc.org.uk), we’ve explored the role of community groups
and other local organisaions in reducing local energy use, in relaion to other organisaions such as
Local Authoriies. We developed this simple tool to aid discussion and relecion.
Method: Present a chart with 10 segments about the roles of your group. In this case the focus was
the role of community groups in changing energy-related behaviours, but you can choose what to
populate the segments with.
• Community engagement e.g. geing people involved in community and climate change
iniiaives
• Empowering individuals and groups e.g. providing them with the means and conidence to
take acion (as well as the knowledge)
• Developing innovatory approaches to reducing local energy use e.g. providing them with the
knowledge, conidence and means to take acion
• Changing energy-related behaviours e.g. geing people to recycle more, drive less etc.
• Encouraging the adopion of, and/
or delivering low carbon/energy-
eicient technologies
• Addressing fuel poverty - e.g.
helping people access grants to
arrange installaion of energy
eiciency improvements
• Generaing community /socio-
economic beneit e.g. community
ies/spirit, inancial savings,
jobs etc.
• Disseminaion to other groups
[external] e.g. sharing knowledge/
experience with other groups
• Inluencing policy [external]
e.g. local council and/or naional
government
• Innovaion – e.g. providing them
with the knowledge, conidence
and means to take acion
• One blank segment
If you had a list of goals and aims from earlier in the year, you
could relect on these, see what you have achieved, what’s been
hard, and probe for the reasons. It’s not about blame, it is about
learning how you work, your collecive capaciies and limits. The
role of saving energy and carbon doesn’t, and shouldn’t, rest on
the shoulders of your group alone! When relecing on what you
have, and haven’t, achieved, it might help to see who else could
have helped you, by asking ‘who could have helped here and
what role could they have played?’. This can be invaluable for
forward planning.

48
11. Discussion/quesions
(a): Do they agree with these roles? Are there any other roles/funcions not menioned? If so, add
them to the chart in the blank spaces or tweak the exising ones.
(b): Sicker ime. Give each paricipant a maximum of:
• 10 orange sickers which represent community roles, and
• 10 green sickers which represent the roles of another organisaion (it could be the local
council), and, if necessary,
• 10 yellow sickers which represent the roles of other agencies
Ask them to sick them on the icons where they think the relevant organisaion has carried
out this role well to date.
(c): Relecion and discussion. Relect on where the sickers are. Pick examples of roles/funcions
where the community group (and/or other organisaions) thinks they are doing well (i.e. those with
most sickers) and not so well (with least sickers), and relect on the reasons, i.e. why and how is
this role carried out well/not so well?
References:
i) htp://www.greeningcampaign.co.uk
ii) Hopkins, R. (2011), The Transiion Companion, Green Books, 2011.
iii) Macy, J., and Young Brown, M. (1998) ‘Coming Back to Life’ ,New Society Publishers, Gabriola
Island. Also see htp://www.joannamacy.net/theworkthatreconnects/newpracices.html

49
A Step-by-Step Guide to Monitoring and Evaluaion
Secion 5: Useful quesions for interviews and surveys
This is a compilaion of example quesions that may be useful for your group. It is in three secions:
1. Example quesions about household energy from the EVALOC research project
2. Example of an end of project survey quesion set from Low Carbon West Oxford
3. Sample demographic monitoring form from Low Carbon West Oxford
1. Example quesions about household energy from the EVALOC
research project
Included below are some example quesions taken from a home energy survey used as part of
the EVALOC research project. The ones indicated with an asterisk (*) are from the Evaluaion
reports for projects who received funding as part of the Low Carbon Community Challenge . If you
are conducing more in depth housing surveys, it is advisable to use a tool that can calculate the
esimated energy savings. For suggesions of tools see Secion 4.
Topic Example quesions
Retrospecive
quesions about home
energy improvements
• Have you installed any home energy improvements since you have
moved into your home? (Yes / No)
• If Yes, what home energy improvements have you installed? (refer to list
below)
• Why did you have them installed?
• Who or what prompted you to install them?
• Has the installaion of the energy saving improvements in your home
inluenced your behaviour in terms of energy use? In what ways?
A checklist could include: Insulaion (lot, cavity wall, solid wall), heaing
controls, energy eicient lighing, solar photovoltaics / solar hot water,
wood fuel heaing, energy eicient appliances, other.
1 htp://www.evaloc.org.uk/
2 htp://www.transiiontogether.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/LCCCBaselineResearchMiniReport%E2%80%93Totnes.pdf

50
Aitude How concerned, if at all,
are you:
Very
concerned
Fairly
converned
No
opinion
Not very
converned
Not at all
concerned
i) About global warming/
climate change?
ii) That energy supplies will
be interrupted or run out in
the future?
iii) About rising energy
prices and fuel bills?
Feelings Please write one word which best describes how you feel about climate change:
Individual
agency
To what extent do you agree with the following statement: “I feel capable of reducing energy
use in my home”
Answer choices (either as ick box for survey, or lashcard if asking in person)
• Strongly agree
• Tend to agree
• Neither agree nor disagree
• Tend to disagree
• Strongly disagree
Energy
behaviours
How oten do
youdo the following
things?
Always Very oten Quite
oten
Occasionally Never Don’t
know
N/A
i) Leave your TV or
PC on standby for
long periods of ime
ii) Switch of lights
when you are not in
the room
iii) Close windows
before turning on or
up the heaing
iv) Put more clothes
on if you are feeling
a bit cold, before
puing the heaing
on
v) Boil the ketle with
more water than you
are going to use
vi) Spend less ime
in the shower, and/
or use less hot water
for baths
vii) Wash clothes at
30 degrees or lower
viii) Hang clothes out
to dry rather than
tumble drying
ix) Leave a mobile
phone charger
switched on at the
socket when not in
use
Follow up: what are your reasons for this?

51
Community
norms
* To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statement?
‘in my area trying to reduce your energy use (or carbon footprint) is the ‘normal’ thing to do’
• Strongly agree
• Tend to agree
• Neither agree nor disagree
• Tend to disagree
• Strongly disagree
…and what are your reasons for this?
Inluence of
LCC group
on energy
behaviours:
Overall how important would you say [_ Group_] advice and/or support has been in helping
reduce your home energy use?
• Not at all
• A litle
• A lot
• It was crucial/I wouldn’t have done it otherwise
Wider
changes
Other than the changes in your home energy use menioned previously, have you
experienced any other changes as a result of your involvement in [_Group_]…
i)...In your home, such as:
- Other energy related changes, i.e. changes to your awareness about energy use or your
knowledge/skills about how to save energy?
- Financial changes i.e. to bills, value of house?
- Quality of life changes i.e. changes to temperature/comfort, health, family and relaions?
ii)…In your community, such as:
- Sense of belonging to the community?
- Number and types of relaionships in the community?
- Paricipaion in community organisaions?
- Ability or capacity to make changes in your community?

52
Relevance and
accessibility of
community group
How strongly do you agree/
disagree with the following
statements about [__Group__]:
Strongly
agree
Tend
to
agree
Neither
agree nor
disagree
Tend to
disagree
Strongly
disagree
i) the group is helping people
like me to reduce their energy
consumpion
ii) the group is helping people
like me reduce their bills
iii) the group is encouraging the
wider community to reduce
energy consumpion
iv) the group is accessible to
me
v) the group is relevant to me
vi) the group is increasing the
sense of community locally
vii) the group is bringing jobs to
the neighbourhood
viii) the group is bringing
beneits to the community
Explain…in what ways? …what beneits?
Evaluaion quesions
asked at events
These quesions can be incorporated into a feedback form.
What was the most useful thing you learnt through your paricipaion in this event?
Has this event afected your moivaion to save energy?
Yes / No / Unsure at the moment
Has this event afected your ability to save energy?
As a result of coming to this event, do you intend to make any changes to your lifestyle
to reduce your energy use?

53
2. Example of an end of project survey quesion set from Low
Carbon West Oxford
This was for paricipants in their ‘Low Carbon Living Programme’, a community based iniiaive
encouraging people to take pracical acion to reduce their carbon footprints. You can ind the
details here: htp://www.lowcarbonhub.org/low-carbon-living-programme
Secion 1: Personal details
1) What is your name? (Opional)……………………………………………………………………..
2) What type of house do you live in (please ick the appropriate column)
Owner/occupier Private rented
Council rented Housing associaion
3) Who lives in your house? (Please circle the correct number for each)
Adult men 1 / 2 / 3 / 4
Adult women 1 / 2 / 3 / 4
Preschool Children 1 / 2 / 3 / 4
Children at primary school 1 / 2 / 3 / 4
Pupils at secondary school 1 / 2 / 3 / 4
Secion 2: Your household energy use
Please make sure you have completed the last column of your carbon cuing pledge sheet and then
answer the quesions below.
4/ What percentage of your ‘year one’ carbon cuing pledges have you achieved over the last
year?
5/ What were the most important factors that enabled you achieve your carbon cuing pledges
over the last year? (Please list in order of importance.)

54
6/ How important were the following elements of the Low Carbon Living programme in enabling
you to achieve your pledges over the last year? (Please put a ick in the appropriate column for
each factor).
1 2 3 4 5
Measuring my annual carbon footprint
Taking my monthly meter readings
Using the eco eye energy display
Receiving the informaion sheets
Paricipaing in the carbon busing session
Receiving advice from local experts
Learning from the pracical experiences of other
households
Having access to the LCWO small grant
Receiving informaion about other energy saving grants
Making my pledges/goals
Other (please specify)
Not important Very important
7) What were the most important barriers to you achieving your carbon cuing pledges over the
last year? (Please list in order of importance)

55
1 2 3 4 5
Lack of ime
Cost/Money
Feeling overwhelmed
Scepicism (will it make a diference?)
Lack of informaion
Conlicing informaion
Other more pressing prioriies
Lack of pracical or technical support
Lack of support from family
Scepicism from friends or neighbours
Change of circumstance
Change of prioriies
Other (please specify)
Not at all Partly A lot
9) How saisied have you been with your involvement with the Low Carbon Living Programme to
date? (Please circle a number)
Not at all Partly Very
1 2 3 4 5
10) Do you have any suggesions for how we could improve the low carbon living programme in
the future?
8) How much did the following things get in the way of you achieving your carbon cuing
pledges? (Please put a ick in the appropriate column for each factor).

56
A litle bit more about you
11) How far do you agree or disagree with the following statements
1 2 3 4 5
achieving my carbon cuing pledges was less diicult than
I thought
achieving my carbon cuing pledges saved me money
being part of the Low Carbon Living Programme has made
me more conident that I can reduce my carbon footprint
being part of the Low Carbon Living Programme has made
me more convinced that we can reduce our communiies
carbon footprint
being part of the Low Carbon Living Programme has
enabled me to get to know more people in my community
increased my understanding of climate change
helped increase my understanding of climate change
increased my commitment to tackling climate change
Strongly agree.............Strongly disagree
12) Have you done any of the following in the last 3 months?
Have you done any of the following lately? Please ick all that apply
Writen/talked to your MP about any issue
Writen/talked to a local poliician about any issue
Atended a meeing about any poliical issue
Signed a peiion
Done voluntary work
Helped out in other local community aciviies
Helped out at local school
Talked to friends about Low Carbon West Oxford
Talked to neighbours about Low Carbon West Oxford
Bought fair trade
Bought organic
13) Who took most responsibility in your household for reducing energy consumpion over the
last year? (Please state their relaionship to you, gender and age).
14) Do you see your paricipaion the Low Carbon Living household programme as part of a long
term commitment to reduce your energy consumpion i.e. that will extend beyond this year?
Yes/No (Please circle)

57
15) Would you be willing to help recruit other households to paricipate in the Low Carbon Living
Programme?
Secion 3: What do you think?
16) How important is climate change as an issue facing Britain today? (Please circle a number).
Relaively One of several The most
unimportant important issues important issue
1 2 3 4 5
17) Where do you get informaion about climate change, and how far do you trust the source?
Sources of
informaion
Tick all that
apply
How much do you trust informaion from this source? (Please put a ick
in the appropriate column for each factor)
Not at all Partly Completely
1 2 3 4 5
Don’t get
informaion
Work
TV
Radio
Friends
Neighbours
Newspapers
Books
Internet/
websites
LCWO
Local council
Government
Energy
Saving Trust
Other
(please
state)
Thank you for taking the ime to complete our quesionnaire

58
3. Sample demographic monitoring form
This is a form used by Low Carbon West Oxford for their Low Carbon Living programme.
Low Carbon Living Programme monitoring form
It is our aim to be inclusive and ensure that everyone in the community has a chance to
paricipate in, shape and beneit from our aciviies if they want. We also want to learn how to
make energy savings in a range of diferent household types.
To help us to monitor the spread of demographic groups and household types in the Low Carbon
Living programme please could you supply the following opional informaion. If you choose to
provide informaion it will be kept separately from the informaion on your carbon emissions. It
will be treated in the strictest conidence in accordance with the principles of the Data Protecion
Act 1998 for obtaining and processing “sensiive” personal data and will not be used for other
purposes, passed on to any other party, or published on an individual basis.
What gender are you?
Female Transgender
Male Prefer not to say
What age house do you live in?
Pre-18th Century Victorian
Edwardian Pre-war 20th Century
1950s-70s 1980s-1990s
20th Century Prefer not to say
What type of house do you live in?
Owner/occupier Private rented
Council rented Housing Associaion
Prefer not to say
To what age gtroup do you belong?
16-
19
20-
29
30-
39
40-
49
50-
59
60-
64
65+ Prefer not
to say
Are you
Married/couple Married/couple with
children
Single Single with children
Prefer not to say
Disability monitoring informaion – do you consider yourself to have a disability?
No Prefer not to say
Yes
3 The deiniion of a disability according to the Disability Discriminaion Act 1995 (DDA), is ’‘A physical or mental impairment which has substanial and long term adverse efect on his or
her ability to carry out normal day-to-day aciviies’’. (Long term in this deiniion is taken to mean more than 12 months.) This deiniion also includes long term illness such as cancer,
HIV and mental health. The form then provides examples of disabiliies.

59
Ethnic monitoring informaion
Ethnic background is not necessarily the same as naionality or country of birth. Please ick which
is closest to how you see yourself, or write a more speciic group if you wish.
Asian or Asian Briish:
Bangladeshi Indian
Pakistani Any other Asian
background
Chinese Please specify if you
wish
Black or Black Briish
African Caribbean
Other Black/African/
Caribbean background
Please secify if you
wish
Mixed/Muliple ethnic groups
White and Asian White and Black
African
White and Black
Caribbean
Any other mixed/
Muliple Ethnic
background
(please specify if you
wish)
White
English/ Welsh/
Scoish/ Northern
Irish/ Briish
Irish
Any other white
background (please
specify if you wish)
Other Ethnic groups
Any other ethnic group
(please specify if you
wish)
Prefer not to say
Religion/Belief monitoring informaion - Please ick a box from the list below
Aetheist/
none
Buddhist Chrisian Hindu
Jewish Muslim Sikh Prefer not
to say
Other (please specify if you wish)
Please return this form to your group co-ordinator. You may wish to return in an unmarked
envelope if you wish your data to be enirely anonymous.

60
Photo:
Mim
Saxl
Photography
Monitoring and Evaluaion for Sustainable Communiies by htp://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/research/technologies/projects/
monitoringandevaluaion.html is licensed under a Creaive Commons Atribuion-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported
License.
Version 1.0 Published January 2014.
Design: Catalyst Campaigns, www.catalystcampaigns.co.uk

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