Process and results of analytical framework and typology development for POINT: CONTRACT No 217207. Collaborative Project - Small and medium scale focused project. EU-FP7 Research Project

POINT is a project about how indicators are used in practice; to what extent and in what way indicators actually influence, support, or hinder policy and decision making processes, and what could be done to enhance the positive role of indicators in such processes. The project needs an analytical framework for the subsequent empirical research, lifting off from the initial outline in the POINT proposal, and drawing on existing theories, literature and expert advice.

The purpose of this report is to craft such a framework, to describe the logic behind it and the process towards it, and suggest the applications of it. Key inter-related issues for building the framework, as addressed in this report, include, •Terminologies: How basic terms such as ‘use’ and ‘influence’ of ‘indicators’ and ‘framework’s are defined and ‘typologised’ • Causalities: How relationships between policies and indicators can be characterised; how ‘influence pathways’ for indicators can be depicted; which factors can help explain use and influence (or their absence) along the pathways •Theories: Research fields and theories that can be drawn upon to generate relevant concepts and hypotheses about use and influence of indicators; How insights from different fields, paradigms, and studies can be combined The report reviews and seeks to synthesize a multitude of approaches and findings in a broad field of literature on use and influence of indicators and related areas.

The resulting framework consists of the structuring of the knowledge, a set of core concepts and associated typologies, a series of analytic schemes proposed, and a number of research propositions and questions for the subsequent empirical work in POINT.