For the donors, it is very important to know what effect your intervention has on the target community.That is why they want you to evaluate your project in the end. To be able to make any statement about this, you need a baseline study to have a data pool.
A baseline study is basically a collection of data about the situation in the community you want to work in before your project starts. It is a detailed description of the status quo. This can be in the form of a survey, research, interviews or other ways of data collection. When you set up a good baseline study at the beginning of your project, all conclusions you make later about the results you achieved are based on the steady ground.
What can you use your baseline study for?
For monitoring your project, the baseline study is of core importance and should always take place before and project activities begin. The entire evaluation of the project will be based on the baseline study and its quality will determine the quality of the outcomes of the evaluation process as well. Thus it is very important to take care in deciding upon the indicators and which kind of data you want to include and collect.
Also, think of other uses of the data that you are collecting. It is always advisable to have a broad data pool to be able to use it for different purposes like future applications, reports, and brochures. The more concrete information you can gather about your target population, the better for your representation.
What should be included in your baseline study?
It depends a lot on your specific project what you should include in your baseline study. You should definitely collect data about the members of the community you work in, household sizes, occupation, education and other general information. Then you need information on all indicators that you defined. Try to come up with different areas in which your project will trigger change and collect as much information as you can in these areas.
In general, it is advisable to set up the baseline study a little bit broader than you might think is necessary. Once in the field, collecting the data it is easy to add one or two questions. If you realize later that you need that information, it is a big task to go back into the field. Also, once you started the project it is more difficult to get the information again because your activities might already have influenced the data.
The indicators in your baseline study should be measurable though. The time and resources you spend on your baseline study should match the size of your project.
