Quantitative or qualitative factor or variable that provides a simple and reliable means to measure achievement. to reflect the changes connected to an intervention, or to help assess the performance of a development actor. (Source: OECD, 'Glossary of Key Terms in Evaluation and Results Based Management')

Qualitative or qualitative factor or variable that provides a simple and reliable means to measure achievement, to reflect the changes connected to an intervention, or to help assess the performance of human rights policy (Source: International Fund for Agricultural Development, Monitoring and Evaluation Glossary)

The Aggregated and combined summaries of facts, as signposts for what a situation is and how it is developping. For example, the existence of freely operating political parties and of major newspapers that are not controlled by the state is an indicator of the observance of civil liberties. Indicators may be strictly quantitative (such as the UNDP Human Development Index), largely qualitative, or a mix of both. (Source: Radstaake and Bronkhorst, 'Matching Practice with Principles. Human Rights Impact Assessment: EU Opportunities').

A Human Rights Indicator is a piece of information used in measuring the extent to which a legal right is being fulfilled or enjoyed in a given situation. (Source: Green, 'What we talk about when we talk about indicators: current approaches to human rights measurement').

An indicator is an instrument or tool for evaluation, a yardstick to measureresults and to assess realization of desired levels of performance in a sustained and objective way. (Source: Kapoor, 'Indicators for programming in human rights and democratic development: a Preliminary Study').

Technically speaking, an indicator refers to a set of statistics that can serve as a proxy or metaphor for phenomena that are not directly measurable. However, the term is often used less precisely to mean any data pertaining to social conditions (Source: Cobb and Rixford, 'Lessons learned from the History of Social Indicators').

The definition and qualities of an indicator have long been the subject of debate. An indicator is a variable, or measurement, which may convey both a direct and indirect message. So long as it can be consistently measured, it can be based on either quantitative or qualitative information. (...) An indicator is generally expressed as a single figure, even when it combines information from a number of different sources. Presentations of more complex arrays of inter-related figures are usuallu referred to as statistical tables or tablations, which in many cases are needed to supplement the summary information contained in indicators. (Source: United Nations Population Fund, 'Technical and Policy Division, Indicators for Population and Reporductive Health Programmes 4')

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