Awareness of Protection Services

The indicator assesses the proportion of the target group members aware of the promoted protection services or of an organization’s referral mechanism that can help them access these services. The services can be provided by your agency as well as by other service providers. The data helps you understand the need for promotion activities. Later it helps you evaluate their effectiveness.

Determine the indicator's value by using the following methodology:

1) Define all the protection services that are promoted by the intervention among the target group members (i.e. list only those services that are relevant to the needs of the given target group). These can include, for example, the following services for children:

   - psychosocial support for children who experienced violence or trauma

   - family reunification services for unaccompanied and separated children

   - Child-Friendly Spaces where children can spend their free time

2) Decide how many / which relevant protection services a target group member should know about (as a minimum) to be considered as “aware of the available protection services”. For example, at least 3 out of 5 key services. Be realistic – it is not likely that people would know about all the offered services, so avoid using an unrealistically high target.

3) Conduct interviews with a representative sample of the target group members, assessing whether they are aware of the promoted services (ask separately about each of the services). Examples of survey questions include:

Q1: Do you know or have you heard of anyone who is [specify what the service is doing – e.g. providing assistance to women who need help with getting their identity documents]?

A1: yes / no

If the answer is YES, ask one or more questions that will verify whether the person is really aware of the service (or a referral mechanism that can lead her/him to the service) and does not just claim to be aware – for example, asking what the service is for, where it is provided, who provides it, etc. The main purpose of this question is to verify that the respondent is really aware of the service – not whether s/he knows all the details about the service.

4) Count the number of respondents who knew about the minimum number of services (see point 2) – i.e. those who can be considered as “aware of the available protection services”.

5) To calculate the indicator’s value, divide the number of target group members that are aware of the available protection services by the total number of respondents. Multiply the result by 100 to convert it to a percentage. 

Disaggregate the data by age group, gender and other criteria.

1) Use this indicator only if your organization is capable of acting upon the data – for example, if the data shows that the target population is not aware of many protection services, your organization should ensure that this gap is addressed.

2) Consider also reporting on 1) the average number of services the target group members were aware of; and 2) the proportion of the target group members aware of the individual service.

3) Consider also assessing whether the respondent is aware of how to access each of the promoted services. However, this is additional information – it should not be reflected in the calculation of the indicator’s value, but it can be helpful for identifying where the main gaps are.

If your objective is to actually ensure that the target group members know how to access the services, then you can rephrase the indicator to “% of target group members aware of the available protection services and how to access them”.

4) In some contexts, the enumerators might need to ask about people’s awareness of more sensitive services, such as support to people affected by domestic violence. Talking about such topics is sensitive and poses risks to the respondent as well as to the enumerator. Take advantage of IndiKit's Rapid Guide to Collecting Survey Data on GBV (see below) to know how to minimize the risk of any harm and ensure the desired quality of collected data.