Resources

School-WISE materials and reports

If you are considering using the School-WISE Scales, start with the survey instruments and the project primer.

Jump toSurvey instruments Publications
A study team member running through the survey with a student during trial data collection

Survey instruments

These are the instruments currently being implemented. They are longer than the final scales will be, given that the current phase is about determining which items to keep.

School-WISE Student Survey

The full student instrument, covering water, sanitation, hygiene, menstrual health, and waste management.

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School-WISE School Staff Survey

The staff instrument, covering the same five domains from the perspective of teaching and non-teaching staff.

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Teams planning to use the instruments should contact us first. We provide training, translation guidance, and the accompanying facility assessment protocol.

Facility assessment protocol

Surveys are paired with a structured assessment of each school's WASH infrastructure, using observational methods recommended by WHO and UNICEF. This assessment is what makes it possible to compare experiential results against conventional supply-side indicators.

Project documents

School-WISE and HCF-WISE Project Primer

A short overview of why the project exists, how it is designed, where it is being conducted, and who is involved.

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Call for Partners

A one-page summary of what partnership involves, for sharing with organizations that might want to implement the surveys.

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Data Sharing, Attribution, and Consortium Guidelines

How data are shared, how authorship is determined, and what partners commit to.

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Publications

Peer-reviewed papers from the scale development work are in preparation. Early findings from consortium sites have appeared in the following.

Measuring Student and Staff Experiences with WASH in Ugandan Schools
Sandec News, Eawag
Findings on WASH in health care facilities are collected on the HCF-WISE Resources page.

Presentations

UNC Water and Health Conference
October 2025

Consortium members presented on what the data reveal about WASH conditions and lived experiences among children and adolescents, and survey items were reviewed as candidate advanced indicators for WASH in schools in a side session hosted by WHO and UNICEF. Presenters included Lambert Mugabo, Fiker Abebe, Christina Barstow, Rick Johnston, Joshua Miller, Steven Rhue, and Sera Young.

WHO and UNICEF WASH in Health Care Facilities Network webinar
March 2025

Joshua Miller presented the project's approach and its relevance for advancing measurement of WASH service adequacy and user experience.

Newsletter

The project newsletter carries updates on milestones, new sites, publications, and consortium news.

Related tools and reading

HCF-WISE Scales

The parallel instrument for health care facilities.

Visit the site
Household (HWISE) and Individual (IWISE) Water Insecurity Experiences Scales

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

Visit the site
WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme

Global monitoring of WASH in schools, and the source of the service ladder definitions used in the facility assessment.

washdata.org
The WISE Scales: A New Way to Measure Water Insecurity

A plain-language introduction to the WISE Scales, and to the work extending them into schools and health care facilities. Published on ReliefWeb.

Read the article
Eawag Sandec: the Uganda study

The partner project page at Eawag’s Sandec department, covering the Uganda school and health care facility work. It still carries the project’s former name, INWISE.

Visit the site