Benchmarking expectations and quality of metrics of societal change
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Accurate assessment of societal change relies on robust metrics, yet the reliability of commonly used indicators is uncertain. We conducted an expert-elicitation-guided (n = 24) comprehensive audit of 99 indicators—including 37 pre-selected and 62 expert-nominated markers—across key domains such as climate, economy, public health, and peace/war. Each indicator was evaluated based on definability, quantifiability, data availability, global representativeness, transparency, and temporal resolution. Our audit revealed that only 29.7% of pre-selected indicators and 32.3% of expert-suggested indicators met all quality criteria. Furthermore, the perceived importance of a domain was inversely related to the quality of its available indicators. Moreover, direct measures tended to score higher in quality than composite indices. These findings highlight significant gaps in the metrics used to track societal change, raising concerns about the data informing policy and public understanding. We underscore the need to develop more precise, transparent, globally representative, temporally precise indicators to effectively assess human progress.
