How to Measure SDG Impact: Weighted Household Surveys, Step by Step
Most projects say they contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals. Far fewer can show it with numbers that stand up. Our 60-second walkthrough shows how a project measures SDG impact household by household, scores it, and reports it live.
The film follows a fictional programme, Tulivu Valley Resilience, across three villages and 1,180 households. Here's how each step works and how the scores are calculated.
Setting up the project
1. Create the SDG project: name, type, communities and area.
2. Bring the community in: every household joins by QR code or invite code.
3. Pick your SDG templates: the film uses five goals (SDGs 1, 2, 5, 6 and 13) and 22 indicators.
4. Weight what matters most: set each indicator's weight within its goal.
5. Teach a lesson, here 'Safe water at home', with a quiz that earns points.
6. Open the forum and grievances: talk, raise issues and see them resolved.
In the villages
7. A household answers offline: answers are saved on the phone and sync when it's back in signal, earning 30 points.
8. Answers become indicator scores: each is scored 0 to 100, then weighted into the goal.
9. Scores roll up from household to village to project, and can be split by gender.
10. Every goal, year on year: five goals and three villages in one view, with CSV and JSON exports.
11. Report live to partners through the API, anonymised, as surveys sync.
How the scoring works
Each answer option carries a development value from 0 to 4, and each question carries a weight that reflects how much it matters to the indicator. Weights typically run from about 0.5 to 3. A question's score is the answer value multiplied by its weight, and the goal score is the household's total as a percentage of the maximum possible.
Take Halima's SDG 6 (clean water) answers in the film. Her water comes from a protected borehole (3 of 4, or 75), she treats it with chlorine tablets (4 of 4, or 100), the trip takes under 30 minutes (75) and supply is reliable most days (75). With weights of 3, 3, 2 and 2, her score is (75×3 + 100×3 + 75×2 + 75×2) ÷ 10 = 82.5.
From household to project
Household scores average up to village level, then to the project, weighted by the number of households in each village. In the film, SDG 6 scores are 74.0, 69.0 and 61.0 across the three villages, giving a project score of 68.2, up from 52.1 the year before. Split by gender, women-led households score 66.4 and men-led households 69.1: exactly the kind of gap a funder will want addressed, and one a simple yes or no survey would miss.
Personal data stays anonymous. Partners see community and project scores, trends and comparisons, never individual households.
Choosing goals and weights
Start with the goals your project can realistically influence, not all 17. Pick indicators you can measure with a short survey, and set the weights with the community and local experts so the score reflects what matters on the ground. Keep the core questions the same each year so trends stay comparable. And use the lessons to explain why the survey matters: response rates rise when people can see the point.
Why weighted scoring beats tick-box reporting
Counting households with water access hides most of what matters: how safe the water is, how far people walk, whether it runs every day. Weighted indicators capture quality as well as access, can be tuned to the local context, and turn messy survey answers into one comparable score per goal.
They also make progress visible year on year, which is what links a project's activities to real outcomes. Indicators can be tagged to official UN codes such as 6.1.1, safely managed drinking water.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you measure SDG impact at community level?
With short household surveys built from SDG indicator templates. Answers are scored 0 to 100, weighted by importance and rolled up from household to village to project, then tracked year on year.
What is a weighted SDG score?
A score where each question counts according to how much it matters to the indicator. Answer values (0 to 4) are multiplied by question weights and expressed as a percentage of the maximum, giving a 0 to 100 score per goal.
Can SDG data be broken down by gender?
Yes. Scores can be split, for example between women-led and men-led households, which supports SDG 5 reporting and shows gaps within a community.
Can households answer SDG surveys without internet?
Yes. Surveys work offline on the phone and sync automatically when it reconnects, with GPS tagging and anonymity preserved.
Which SDGs can be tracked?
All 17. The app includes templates for every goal, and each project chooses the goals and indicators relevant to it. The film uses five goals and 22 indicators.