Ability to Cope with Future Shocks and Stresses

What: This indicator measures the percentage of households that consider themselves to be able to better cope with future shocks and stresses. Why: Many households are affected by shocks and stresses, from natural hazards, conflict, or disease. To ensure that households can develop positively despite these, it is important that they increase their resilience to recover better from shocks and stresses as a result of project activities. When: This indicator should be collected by projects that focus on resilience building and disaster risk reduction. Examples include projects that develop disaster risk reduction plans or that build social capital or safety nets to cope with shocks and stresses.

Method: Collect the following data by conducting individual survey interviews with a representative sample of male and female members of the population at risk. If you do not have the budget, you can conduct >=6 focus group discussions with community members who represent diverse groups (like male, female, wealthy/poor, old/young) and ask them to estimate how the share of the group that they represent would answer.

Questions:

The questions that are used to collect this indicator need to be adapted to the context as follows:

1. Decide on the recall period in the first question: Are you referring to the past 6 or 12 months?
2. Adapt the list of shocks or stresses to fit into your regional context. Be sure to include all potential shocks and stresses that people might be exposed to in the context, even if these are outside the scope of your specific project.

How to calculate:

1. If a respondent indicates in Q3 that they will be able to cope better or much better with the same shock in the future, then they should be counted towards the indicator.
2. The indicator value is the total number of participants that will be able to cope better or much better with the same shock in the future (numerator) divided by the total number of participants (denominator).

What activities should the indicator be used for?

This indicator should be collected by projects that focus on resilience building and disaster risk reduction. Examples include projects that develop disaster risk reduction plans or that build social capital or safety nets to cope with shocks and stresses.

Disaggregation should be adapted based on the project context. Below are recommended disaggregation categories.

• Household composition: Male-headed, female-headed, child-headed
• Disability status: Household with disabled person, Household without disabled person
• Sex: female, male;
• Age: <=29, >=30

The questionnaire module used for this indicator is inspired by complexity-aware methods (see for example Cognitive Edge’s “Sensemaker Tool” and CRS’ “Pathways to Prosperity” methodology for resilience analysis). For more examples on how to inquire the ability to cope with future shocks, refer to Mercy Corps’ “MRED” Program amongst others.