---
title: "Measuring the Source"
number: 3
statement: "How do you measure the impact of source-level work, such as changing a story, a norm or an institution, when the effects are diffuse, shared and delayed?"
progress: "A measurement approach validated on at least one historical source-level change, recovering an effect that independent historians agree took place."
conditions: ["symptom-trap", "measurement-gap", "short-horizon"]
status: open
bounty: "Unfunded. The Question Bounties program will attach prizes once it is funded."
---

## Why it matters

If funders require measurements that source work cannot provide, useful work may be missed. That is one possible mechanism behind the [Symptom Trap](/diagnosis/symptom-trap/) hypothesis. Hard-to-measure is not the same as small.

## Where to start

Work backwards from changes everyone agrees happened, such as the spread of oral rehydration therapy or the end of smallpox (see [Historical Case Studies](/record/case-studies/)), and test which measures would have detected them early. Contribution analysis, process tracing and forecasting tournaments are candidate methods.