80. Proportion of national stakeholder staff participating in training, coaching, or mentoring reporting improvement in knowledge/skills

80. Proportion of national stakeholder staff participating in training, coaching, or mentoring reporting improvement in knowledge/skills

VERSION

V3.0 - 2026.03 — Existing with revision

INDICATOR CODE

80

TECHNICAL OWNER

PRGS- CCS Workstream

INDICATOR TYPE

Country Level Outcome Indicator

INDICATOR CLASSIFICATION

Complementary

INDICATOR SCOPE

Sector Neutral

APPLICABILITY

This indicator is recommended for all CCS sub-activities, when capacity strengthening efforts aim to improve the knowledge or skills of national stakeholders.

The selection of this indicator is also recommended against the following sub-activity in CSPs logframes: Prevention of stunting (STUN).

Note:  As this indicator relies on surveys or interviews with national partners, consider the nature of the partnership to determine whether data collection is feasible.

UNIT OF MEASUREMENT & ANALYSIS

Percentage of participants

DEFINITION

This indicator aims to measure the proportion of national stakeholder staff who, after participating in training, coaching, or mentoring activities, report an improvement in their knowledge and/or skills. The following definitions apply to this indicator.

People participating: This indicator counts individuals engaged in institutional capacity strengthening. Their participation must aim to change knowledge, skills, or practices relevant to their professional role – not their personal or household food security or nutrition status.

Training, coaching or mentoring: Structured activities (single or multiple sessions) with the explicit goal of improving participants’ capacities, guided by a curriculum or learning plan.

Knowledge/skills: The theoretical understanding and practical abilities acquired or improved through training, coaching and mentoring. This includes both knowledge gained and skills that enable participants to apply what they have learned in their professional role.

RATIONALE

This indicator shows whether participants gained knowledge or skills after taking part in training, coaching, or mentoring. It helps verify whether these activities are having their expected immediate effects and offers an early indication of whether they may lead to broader behavioral or system changes.

According to the Kirkpatrick model, learning interventions can be assessed across four levels. This indicator focuses on levels one (reaction) and two (learning), which precede level three (behavior change) and level four (results). Those higher levels can be tracked through separate indicators, for example, outcome indicator #37 which captures improvements in key system components (programme delivery, human resources, etc.).

DATA COLLECTION TOOL

Surveys or semi-structured key informant interviews should be created to assess the specific learning goals of the intervention.

The measurement approach must be customized to the focus of the training, coaching, or mentoring. Questions should directly test the knowledge and skills targeted by the intervention, and the survey or interview guide should be developed with the activity manager and aligned with the timing of the CCS engagement.

Participants should complete a questionnaire before and after the activity – or series of activities – to determine whether their knowledge or skills have increased. Perception‑based questions, such as asking whether participants feel more knowledgeable, are not suitable. Instead, the assessment should require demonstration of knowledge or skills (e.g. “what five steps would you take to design a food security and nutrition survey?”).

Because this indicator relies on comparing pre- and post-results for the same individual, both tools must include a unique identifier per person to link responses.

SAMPLING REQUIREMENTS

Sample at least 30 people, or all participants if the intervention includes fewer than 30.

INDICATOR CALCULATION FOR REPORTING

This indicator requires a pre- and post- assessment of participants’ knowledge and/or skills. Each participant receives an overall score or qualitative assessment before and after the intervention, and the two results are compared to determine whether improvement occurred.

If a participant shows any improvement – regardless of magnitude – assign a score of ‘1’. If there is no change or a decrease, assign a score of ‘0’. For example, on an exam with thirty possible points, a participant scoring 10 in the pre‑assessment and 11 in the post‑assessment is assigned a ‘1’. A participant scoring 10 in the pre‑assessment and 30 in the post‑assessment is also assigned a ‘1’.

This indicator measures a proportion. Once all participants have been assigned a ‘1’ (improved) or ‘0’ (not improved), sum the number of ‘1’s and divide by the total number of participants assessed:

where:

• j = number of participants who showed improvement

• k = total number of participants surveyed or interviewed

The indicator is reported as a percentage.

DATA ENTRY AND DISAGGREGATION IN CORPORATE SYSTEMS

Values are recorded in the logframe annually. Each value has a reporting combination which is created based on:

• Sub-activity

• Country

Follow-up values are reported in COMET as shown below.

This indicator may be used under one strategic outcome to measure multiple groups of institutional stakeholders (e.g. training on food security data collection for National Bureau of Statistics staff and training on designing nutritious school menus for school feeding staff). Results from different target groups should not be averaged. Instead, each target group should be reported separately in COMET. This can be done by specifying the target group clearly, e.g. district officials managing the school meals programme.

When the same intervention is delivered multiple times to the same target group (e.g. two cohorts of enumerators trained on the same food security data collection methodology), results may be averaged.

When sample sizes exceed 30 participants, country offices are encouraged to collect sex‑disaggregated data to enable gender analysis.

BASELINE

Baselines are set only once, at one of the following points:

1. At the beginning of the CSP, or

2. When the indicator is selected for reporting after the commencement of the CSP, or

3. When a change in target, location and/or modality triggers a new reporting combination (target, location and modality) for an existing indicator.

Baselines remain fixed for the entire CSP period and are not recalculated annually, unless applicable above.

Baseline values are 0.

TARGET SETTING

Annual targets:

Annual targets should be set based on the context and the results from previous years to ensure they are feasible and realistic. When setting targets, consider the environment in which learning takes place, as well as the time, incentives, and conditions that support participant learning. Annual targets should only be set for years in which training, coaching, or mentoring activities are planned.

Annual targets are not cumulative. Each year’s target reflects the expected proportion for that specific year, and results from different years are not added together.

End of CSP target:

The CSP end‑line target should be set using the same considerations. Annual targets may increase over the course of the CSP as national stakeholders and the country office refine their approaches. The CSP end‑line target represents the expected level of performance in the final year. It is not calculated by adding or averaging annual targets; instead, it reflects what is realistically achievable once the learning approach has fully matured.

FREQUENCY OF DATA COLLECTION

Data should be collected before and after each training, mentoring, or coaching activity to enable measurement of participant improvement.

Results should be entered annually in the COMET logframe module.

INTERPRETATION

A higher value indicates that a greater proportion of trained, coached or mentored participants showed an improvement in their knowledge or skills. This indicator is useful for showing how many people were positively influenced by the intervention, but it does not capture the extent of the change or the specific areas of improvement. These details should be provided in the narrative to ensure full contextual understanding.

REPORTING EXAMPLE(S)

A country office trained national stakeholders on best practices for data collection. Before the training began, participants completed a questionnaire to assess their familiarity with different data collection techniques. The questionnaire was scored on a scale of ten. After the training course (five sessions over five weeks), participants completed the same questionnaire again. Each participant was assigned a value of ‘1’ if their score increased from baseline, and ‘0’ if their score stayed the same or decreased. The sum of all ‘1’s was divided by the total number of respondents to calculate the proportion of stakeholders who improved their knowledge or skills following the intervention.

The country office explained the results in their Annual Country Report:

Following a Ministry of Health decision to pilot a community‑based management of acute malnutrition programme, WFP and the Ministry jointly trained 500 health officials from the three pilot counties on the programme’s objectives and implementation modalities. After the training, 85 percent of health officials demonstrated an increased understanding of the programme goals, contributing to smooth implementation during the pilot phase. Building on this, the Ministry of Health plans to extend the pilot to an additional five counties next year.

INDICATORS COLLECTED & ANALYSED AT THE SAME TIME

This indicator should be used in conjunction with output indicator C.25, which measures the number of people engaged in capacity strengthening initiatives. Together, they show both the scale of WFP training, coaching, or mentoring activities and whether participation in these is associated with measurable improvements in knowledge or skills.

COMPLEMENTARY QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

Country offices may use a range of qualitative methods and monitoring approaches to understand the factors that influence the effectiveness of capacity strengthening activities. When pre‑ and post‑assessment results do not show improvements in participant knowledge or skills, targeted inquiries should be conducted to identify the constraints that may have affected learning. This may include, for example, key informant interviews with national stakeholders.

DECISIONS DATA CAN INFORM

This indicator provides essential evidence on the effectiveness of training, coaching and mentoring engagements and should be used to guide revisions to the curriculum and teaching methodology.

VISUALIZATION

Because this indicator is binary (improved/not improved), a simple bar chart or stacked bar chart is the most appropriate way to visualize results. Pie charts are not recommended, as they rely on angles and areas, which are harder to compare accurately and convey little information when there are only two categories.

LIMITATIONS

Although the pre‑ and post‑assessments can show how much participants’ knowledge or skill scores increased, the indicator reduces these results to a simple ‘improved’ or ‘not improved’ outcome. This means it captures whether a change occurred but not the size of the change. Country offices may include additional summary information, such as the average increase in assessment scores, in the ACR narrative for context.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Refer to the CCS Framework, 9 Types of Capacity Strengthening Support, and additional resources in the CCS section of the Programme Guidance Manual.