Sampled on a regular basis Have carefully established baselines Accepted by the community. Provide a way of measuring significant trends without entailing major new expense for data collection Attractive to local media. The press publicizes them and uses them to monitor and analyze community trends. If data are not readily available, a practical method of data collection or measurement exists or can be created. Logically or scientifically defensible.
Good rationales exist for using the specific indicator and for drawing general conclusions from it.
Indicators are not the same thing as the systems they attempt to measure. These numbers, charts, and graphs represent, in very simple terms, a much more complex reality. The indicators, taken together, provide us with a snapshot of our community. The indicators a society chooses to report to itself about itself are surprisingly powerful. They reflect collective values and inform collective decisions.