Efficacy Guide
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How Change Is Tracked

engage.re captures change from three sources. Each source can have attributes — measurable properties that change over time.

Three Sources of Change

Users

People.

Users have attributes that describe their state: employment status, housing situation, health metrics, skills, qualifications.

Example attributes:
  • employed: no → yes
  • housing: temporary → stable
  • qualification: none → NVQ Level 2
  • wellbeing score: 4 → 7

When a user's attribute changes, they can be asked what helped — via the contribution slider.

Entities

Anything that is NOT a human.

This is deliberately broad. An entity is any trackable thing in the world that has measurable properties.

Examples of entities:
  • Air quality sensor
  • Community fund
  • Social housing unit
  • Park or green space
  • Vehicle or fleet
  • Dataset or registry
  • Tree or woodland
  • Building or venue
  • Piece of equipment
  • Plot of land
Example attribute changes:
  • PM2.5: 25 → 18 μg/m³
  • Fund balance: £0 → £50,000
  • Occupancy: vacant → occupied
  • Tree count: 150 → 175

Entity attribution is typically automatic — based on who owns or manages the entity.

Measurables

Initiatives themselves.

Teams, projects, strategies, and issue spaces can have their own tracked attributes — properties of the initiative rather than its participants.

Example attributes:
  • Member count: 150 → 175
  • Budget spent: £10k → £25k
  • Partnerships: 3 → 5
  • Sessions delivered: 0 → 42

Upcoming Attribute tracking for measurables is not yet implemented.

Types of Change

Regardless of source, tracked changes fit these persistent patterns:

State Transition
A → B
unemployed → employed
Continuous Metric
X₁ → X₂
PM2.5: 25 → 18 μg/m³
Accumulative
N → N+1
participants: +1
Relational
edge
mentorship matched
Spatial
L₁ → L₂
user relocated to new area
Temporal
duration
6 months sober
Composite
A ∧ B ∧ C
economic independence
Collective
aggregate
regional employment rate

How Attribution Works

Source How Credit Is Assigned
Users The user is prompted: "What helped you achieve this?" — they distribute credit via the contribution slider
Entities Automatic The initiative that owns or manages the entity gets credit for changes
Measurables Direct The measurable's own attributes change (no external attribution needed)

For more on how credit flows up hierarchies (Team → Project → Strategy → Issue Space) and across geography (Hackney → London → UK → Global), see Attribution .