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Strategic Planning Toolkit: Step 3.3

Develop Measurable Objectives & Activities

The process of writing the youth violence prevention plan involves linking objectives to goals and strategies, specifying activities that must be carried out to accomplish the objectives, and ensuring that objectives and activities are measurable.

Goals are broad-based statements (e.g., increase school safety, stop gang violence, coordinate city and county prevention strategies) and reflect the plan’s purpose or mission. Objectives and activities, however, are more specific and can and should be measured and tracked.

Objectives are statements of how you intend to accomplish each goal. If your goal is to increase school safety, for example, you might have one objective to reduce aggressive classroom behaviors, and another to prevent gang violence near school grounds. Objectives are concerned with both short and long-term achievements.

Activities are the specific tasks that must be completed to accomplish each objective. To prevent gang violence near schools, activities might include increasing police patrols during specified hours. Other activities might be conducted to connect gang-involved students with needed services.

Major activities should delineate a time for completion and indicate responsible parties. Forum youth violence prevention plans are action plans for multi-year implementation. Mechanisms and entities must also be designated or created to track and monitor plan implementation.

Process measures indicate whether the activities and related objective were implemented as planned, whereas outcome measures are concerned with whether implementing an objective achieved the intended results. The Forum strongly recommends developing a logic model to ensure that goals, strategies, objectives, performance measurements, and other plan components are in alignment.

Resources for Setting and Measuring Objectives

See "Step 3: Featured Resources" for a list of useful links grouped under the following category: