Design backward from the decision
Name what you’ll actually decide, then the evidence that would move it — and the instrument designs itself.
Pick the instrument that reveals most
Data, document, survey (mixed), and interview — and when each gives deeper insight than a survey alone.
Write the instruction & the rubric
Plain-language instructions that read every document on arrival, cite the source sentence, and never guess.
Seven deep, practical chapters
Case, Application, Grant, ESG, Impact, Learning, Program — each the hands-on next step from its eBook.
What this guide is about
A survey only answers a question you already knew to ask. The richest signal in any program — why a participant dropped out, where a grantee’s narrative contradicts their numbers, the blocker no checkbox offered — lives in the documents, interviews, and open-ended replies a survey never captures. The Data Design & Prompting Guide is a practical, no-code companion to the whole Sopact Intelligence Library: it teaches you to design for that signal and to write the plain-language instructions that turn it into cited, comparable evidence.
Who should read it
Program managers, M&E and impact leads, foundation officers, review committees, and anyone who runs a program and has to prove it worked — no code, no statistics, no data team required. If you’ve only ever reached for a survey, this is the guide that opens the other 95%.
What’s inside
Part 1 — the craft: design backward from the decision; choose the instrument (data, document, survey, interview); write the question and the instruction; build the rubric; and pick the reporting scope (cell → row → column → grid).
Part 2 — seven deep chapters, one per eBook: Case, Application, Grant, ESG, Impact, Learning, and Program intelligence. Each works one program manager’s real bind end to end — the data to design, the instructions to write, the rubric, the four scopes with worked numbers, the reports to build, and the mistakes to avoid.
How to use it
It’s the practical next step from each eBook: the eBook gives you the why; the matching chapter gives you the how. Every chapter opens with a “start here” pointer back to its guide, so you read the strategy, then build it. Start at sopact.com/ebooks.
