SPI – A NEW KIND OF SPY

Social Progress Index (SPI) seems to be very effective and true measure of evaluating social development as it covers almost the whole of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs - starting from nutrition it goes to inclusion, giving weight to almost every shade of a society’s development.

Social Progress Index categorizes its evaluation criteria as Basic Human Needs, Foundations of Wellbeing and Opportunity, and I think these three areas could be matched broadly with the hierarchy of needs in the following manner:

SOCIAL PROGRESS INDEX	HIERARCHY OF NEEDS
Basic Human Needs	Physiological
	Safety
Wellbeing	Belonging
	Esteem
Opportunity	Self-Actualization

Such measures bring us closer to the solution of evaluating effects of a social venture; if any of the strings of this whole index is moved by introduction and implementation of a social venture then we can safely say that the venture did contribute towards the social development.

   

One of the important most aspects of using this index is that it brings us interesting trends in various areas of social development, like the one we have seen in case of “ecosystem sustainability”. The comparison of overall top three countries on the Social Progress Index with that of top three on Ecosystem Sustainability is given here:

We can clearly observe interesting trend-mix here – the countries ranking highest on the overall index of social progress are actually very low on some specific measures. Therefore, SPI is not only a better way to evaluate the overall social progress but can be used as a tool to measure the impact of social ventures and products. This will help evaluate the difference a social intervention has brought to a specific area of the over-all social well being, enabling matching results with the defined objectives, and the specific set of needs the project has addressed to.