Soft Measures

I read an interesting article today about measurement. An education researcher commented that whenever he evaluates a school his first stop is the boys' bathroom. He claims you can tell a lot about the school climate by the condition of the bathroom. How clean is it? In one school there were fresh cut flowers (not in any school I've ever visited!) His overall message, however, was that many of the best indicators of school success are not the hard empirical facts like test scores, they are softer measures. Some of the indicators he proposes are;

the entrances is disheveld (dead plants, missing sign letters, cigarette butts)

teachers read newspapers and take calls during professional development events

administrators talk solely in the future tense (we are planning to....)

materials aren't up to date and teachers aren't current on current events

windows are covered with dark paper.

In my research methods class we spend a lot of time talking about indicators of a concept. This article is encouraging me to think about othere "soft measures" that we might include in our discussions. For instance, what are soft indicators of neighborhood quality? What are soft indicators of quality health care?