Centering people's experiences to assess WASH adequacy

The School-WISE Scales are survey tools that capture whether WASH services are reliably accessible, acceptable, and adequate to support students' and school staff's needs. They are designed to be applied alongside conventional supply-focused indicators.

A student drinking from a tap at an outdoor school washstand

What the scales measure

The scales ask about people's lived experiences with accessing and using WASH services at school. They cover five domains (water, sanitation, hygiene, menstrual health, and waste management) across four components: availability, accessibility, usability and sufficiency, and reliability over time. Items are written in plain language and ask about experiences over a defined recall period.

How to read the wheel

Five domains, four components

The inner circle holds the five WASH domains. The ring around it holds the four components of WASH security that the scales ask about in every domain.

Hover over, tap, or tab to any part of the wheel to see what it means.

Multiple perspectives

Students and school staff are surveyed concurrently at every site because access to WASH services, and expectations of how well those services should function, can differ between the two groups. Because responses are collected from individuals rather than from the school as a whole, the data support the examination of disparities between students and staff, and by other characteristics such as gender and disability status.

Students

Surveys designed to be answerable by students aged 7 years and older.

School staff

Surveys designed to capture the experiences that matter most to teaching and non-teaching staff.

Design process

The project follows a multi-phase design adapted from the methods behind the Household (HWISE) and Individual (IWISE) Water Insecurity Experiences Scales, which are now validated for use globally, and from published best practice for developing and validating scales.

  1. Item development

    Candidate questions

    Candidate survey questions were drawn from a review of existing WASH instruments and from consultation with WASH experts across research, policy, and practice.

  2. Survey refinement

    Cognitive interviews

    Cognitive interviews with students and staff are conducted to assess whether respondents interpret the questions as intended, and to understand how they arrive at their answers. Items are then revised or dropped based on what those interviews show.

  3. Validation

    Surveys paired with facility assessments

    Surveys are then administered to several hundred students and staff per site and paired with a structured assessment of each school's WASH infrastructure, using observational methods recommended by WHO and UNICEF. This allows direct comparison between experiential WASH insecurity and conventional supply-focused indicators at the same schools.

Who is taking part

  • Studentsaged 7 and older
  • School staffteaching and non-teaching
  • About 10schools per site

Participation is voluntary and occurs during a single session, held in a private room at the school. Respondents may skip any question they prefer not to answer.

A group of students in school uniform smiling and making heart shapes with their hands

Ethical review

The study is approved by the Institutional Review Board of Northwestern University (STU00219169), and local ethical approval is obtained at every site before data collection begins. Site teams provide documentation of local approval and of participant informed consent.

Returning results to drive change

Every participating site receives short, policy-relevant summary reports of de-identified findings, written for the people who can act on them: participating schools, local development partners, and government officials.

What we are learning

Part of the WISE Scales family

The School-WISE Scales join a family of validated experiential water insecurity measures: the Household Water Insecurity Experiences (HWISE) Scale and the Individual Water Insecurity Experiences (IWISE) Scale. A parallel instrument for health care facilities, the HCF-WISE Scales, is being developed by the same consortium.

  • HCF-WISE Scales

    The parallel instrument for health care facilities.

    Visit the site: HCF-WISE Scales

  • WISE Scales (household and individual)

    Validated experiential measures of household and individual water insecurity, and the methodological foundation for this work.

    Visit the site: WISE Scales