Group Task on Developing a Housing Index

Indices are sets of indicators, which try to measure the situation or progress in a specific policy domain such as housing. Indexes usually combine many indicators to form a single measure, i.e. a composite indicator. Indexes usually contain subdomains evaluated using composite indicators. To gain more knowledge about indices, you can complete this task on national migration indices or this task on the Migration Integration Policy Index (MIPEX), before continuing. 

We would like to invite you to sit with your fellow students for around 20 minutes on an expert panel that has the task to design an index on housing for migrants.

The aim of the index is to capture the housing situation of migrants in a specific country and be able to trace whether it is improving or deteriorating. To meet the challenge, you may try to brainstorm about the important issues you want your index to address. Then, you may decide how to measure the situation and progress on each of those issues. You may also want to choose somebody to facilitate the session and guide the process of discussion and/or somebody who is responsible for taking notes of what has been agreed. However, feel free to organize your work in a different way. It might be helpful to divide the roles of moderator and discussants before starting.

For this specific exercise, we assume that no data limitations exist. Just keep in mind that if you were to design a real index, unavailability of data would emerge as a major limitation. Precisely for this reason indexes are often criticized for valuing the measurable instead of measuring the valuable. But on your expert panel, you have the chance to do the right thing. Good luck!

Last modified: Tuesday, 13 September 2022, 4:57 PM