Data Issues in 100-Day Challenges

Here are typical data questions that come up during 100-Day Challenges. For each question, we will offer some thoughts on how these might be handled. 

Question 1: What if there is no baseline? For example, what if we want to set a goal related to increasing the response time of police to emergency calls related to sexual assaults, but we do not know the current response time (no one has been tracking it). We just know it is an issue because survivors have complained about the delay, so we want to improve this. 

Response:

Here are two possible ways to handle the situation:

a) Set a goal as a percentage improvement in the last month of the 100 days, compared to the average in the first month of the 100 days. The rationale is that very little will be be impacted in the first month, as the team would not have started implementing its actions. So the first month can be used a surrogate for the baseline (current or past performance). The key of course is to quickly put a system in place to track the response time, so the team can generate this baseline.  

b) The team can decide that by the end of the 100 days, the goal is to get to a response time of less than ____ minutes. In this case, the team is setting a standard, irrespective of the current performance. 

Question 2: How often should we track progress against the 100-Day Goal?

Response: As often as possible. Ideally, once a week so the team can review progress against the goal in their weekly team meetings.  

Question 3: What if those that have the data will not share it with us? For example, the police is not releasing the number of reported sexual assault cases?

Response: Alrien – any ideas on this?

Question: If our goal, for example, is to reduce the withdrawal rate of domestic violence cases in half, what rate do we use as a baseline? The average monthly withdrawal rate in the past 12 months? The withdrawal rate in the past 100 days? Some other time frame? 

Response: This depends on a few variables. 

a) If the withdrawal rate has been varying somewhat randomly from month to month, than taking an average of a large number of samples (e.g. the last 12 months) is advisable. 

b) If the rate has been trending up or down in the past year, then taking the most recent month as a baseline would be advisable. You might even assume that the trend will continue regardless of the work of the team during 100 days, so the baseline may be the projected withdrawal rate during the 10-0 days. based on the current trend.  Alrien – a diagram here would help showing a trend (increasing slightly each month). and projecting this trend into the three months of the 100 days, and using it as a baseline.   

c) If there is a seasonal variation, for example the withdrawal rate tends to be higher in winter months, as women fear becoming homeless in cold weather, then the baseline could be set based on the comparable three months the year prior. So if the 100 days of the Challenge are May, June and July of 2025, then it would be best to use May, June, and July of 2024. 

Alrien -what other questions come to mind.