Create Metrics (Advanced)

Background

Metrics ask the same question to multiple companies, measure company performance and facilitate comparison between companies. 

Simply, a Metric consists of a Question, it contains an About section explaining the question being asked, and a Methodology section describing how the answers are researched. 

If after exploring the different Metrics that are available on the Wikirate platform, you find that there aren’t existing metrics capturing information that you consider relevant, you can create a New Metric.

When organizing a Research Project for a group of students or researchers, creating Standard Research Metrics is your best option, since this type of Metric question asks information that must be researched directly by individuals.

All researched data points must cite a Source, and can be verified (checked) by other users. 

Creating a new Metric

To create a new metric you have will be asked to input the following information: 

• Designer. It is the organization, user, or Research Group credited with designing the Metric. You can add your username or your organization/educational institution. 

• Title. A short, descriptive Metric name. Example: Total number of employees. 

• Question. A concise question that can be answered concretely for specific companies in specific years.

• Metric Type. One of the researched or calculated types described above.

• Topics. A list of related Topics to help users navigate thematically connected Wikirate content.

• About. A short description of what this Metric is about, its relevance, why companies report on this, and how it is valuable.

• Research Policy. Either Community Assessed (anyone can research answers) or Designer Assessed (only the designer can).

• Methodology. Guidance and tips for determining answer values.

• Report Type. The type of report in which answers to this Metric are found. (Eg. CSR, Conflict Minerals, etc.). This is used to identify relevant sources on the research page.

• Value Type. The data type of values that answer the metric's question. One of the following:

  • Number. Answers can contain only numerical values. Metrics with this type have these subfields:

    • Unit. Eg Metric tonnes.

    • Range. Eg. 0-100

  • Money. A number with a currency

  • Category. Answer value is selected from options, eg Yes/No

  • Multicategory. More than one answer value can be selected from options.

  • Free Text. for questions that require a qualitative response, or have a variety of possible responses (like Country or Region)

Metrics whose value type is “category” or “multicategory” have an Options subfield: a list of possible answer values.

Note: If after you have collected data you want to use it and input it into formulas within Wikirate, please refer to Analyze the Data, where you will learn about Calculated Metrics and how to create such metrics.