How do user updates affect your SCOPEinsight assessments?

SCOPEinsight’s assessments tools are updated based on user experience. Read more to find out how these updates can affect data comparability, and how to make sure your assessments and reassessments are comparable.

The SCOPE tools

We offer four different tools to assess agribusinesses: the SCOPE Rapid, the SCOPE Input Retailer, the SCOPE Basic, and the SCOPE Pro. Each of these tools is used for a different sort of agribusiness.

National scoping: SCOPE Rapid: Get a good understanding of the state of the sector
Input provision: SCOPE Input Retailer: Strengthen the business acumen of last mile retailers
Production: SCOPE Basic (also an SME version): Gain insights into the needs of emerging agribusinesses
Primary Processing: SCOPE Pro (also an SME version): Facilitate mature agribusinesses' access to finance and markets

Because each of these tools assesses a different type of agribusiness, their results are not comparable. However, it is possible to track an agribusiness’s progress by reassessing it with the same tool. As our tools are updated, it is important to be sure that the tool versions for the assessment and reassessment are comparable.

Updates to the SCOPE Basic tool

In 2019, we made a major update to our SCOPE Basic tool. This update, known as SCOPE Basic 2.0, included many changes. These updates increased the reliability of the assessment, which kept the data quality high. They also aligned the tool more closely with market needs and the IWA29, as well as increasing user-friendliness and adding depth and clarity. In the process of making these improvements, we upgraded the entire questionnaire. While some questions only saw minor rephrasing, others were reworked or removed. We added many new questions to the questionnaire, some in the form of two new subdimensions.

Tool Upgrade: SCOPE Basic 2.0
Major updates: Increased reliability, closer alignment with market, closer alignment with IWA29, increased user friendliness, upgraded questionnaire, addition of two subdimensions — The upgrades to the SCOPE Basic 2.0 mean that it is **not compatible** with the original SCOPE Basic tool.

These improvements influence compatibility with the previous version of the SCOPE Basic. Approximately 20% of the questions were functionally unchanged, but the other 80% are no longer directly comparable to their pre-improvement counterparts. For this reason, it is important to make sure that you use the same tool version for reassessments as you did for the baseline assessment. If you used the original SCOPE Basic tool for the baseline assessment, then you must use the same tool for the reassessment, or the data will not be directly comparable.

How to compare data between different tool versions

While the scores from the older version of the SCOPE Basic and the current version are not directly comparable, it is possible to compare the overall SCOPE scores to an extent. Generally, scores with the SCOPE Basic 2.0 tend to be lower than the scores from the original SCOPE Basic tool by approximately 0.2-0.3 points. This is because many of the updated questions are stricter than the previous ones. For example, the dimensions Financial Management and Enabling Environment, in particular, became stricter with the upgrade. Because some dimensions were updated more than others, it is only possible to compare the overall SCOPE scores, not dimensional or sub-dimensional scores.

Looking forward, we have solved the issue with data comparability for future tool upgrades. Thanks to a new way we have developed to upgrade the tool, upgrades with the SCOPE Basic 2.0 tool will never have an issue with compatibility with other versions of SCOPE Basic 2.0. This means that any assessments done with any form of the SCOPE Basic 2.0 tool can be compared to assessments done with any other form of the SCOPE Basic 2.0 tool. However, assessments are done with the older SCOPE Basic tool still can only be fully compared to other assessments done with the older tool.

Are you interested in doing a SCOPE assessment or reassessment with us? Contact us today to see how we can work together.

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