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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Use the dropdown boxes to select the topic area or indicator you are interested in. The relevant links will appear in the table. If you click on a headline indicator, you will be taken to a new page to see the data. If you click on a secondary indicator, a new tab will appear and you will be taken to our data website.

The Best Starts Indicators web page uses Tableau, a software that can be used to make interactive data displays. Click the tabs along the top of the data display to see different details. On the right-hand side of most pages you can click to select/deselect and change options for viewing the data.

A full help page is under development and a link will be placed here when it is available.

The Best Starts for Kids Indicators make available important information about the health and well-being of King County children, youth, families, and communities.

To ensure that Best Starts funded activities align to contribute to population-level changes, Best Starts requests for proposals will ask organizations to be responsive to these indicators.  We are making these indicators publicly available to ensure that all applicants have the same information to support their proposal.

Our additional goal is for the indicators to be an easy to use resource for all community members. Links to additional information will be provided where possible. We plan to add information and resources in the future. 

Information is organized around the results BSK is working to achieve:

  • Babies are born healthy and are provided with a strong foundation for lifelong health and well-being. (Children prenatal to 5 years old)
  • King County is a place where everyone has equitable opportunities to be safe and healthy as they progress through childhood, building academic and life skills to be thriving members of their communities. (Children and youth ages 5 to 24 years old)

Communities offer safe, welcoming and healthy environments that help improve outcomes for all of King County’s children and families, regardless of where they live. Our model of how we expect changes to happen is here.

The Best Starts for Kids Initiative is relying upon the principles outlined in Results Based Accountability  (RBA). RBA is a national model and a disciplined way of thinking and acting to improve entrenched and complex social problems. It uses a data-driven, decision-making process to help communities and organizations get beyond talking about problems to taking action to solve problems. It is a simple, common sense framework that starts with ends – the difference you are trying to make - and works backward, towards means – strategies for getting there. 

RBA makes a distinction between population accountability through population indicators which assess wellbeing of a whole population and performance accountability through performance measures which assess wellbeing of the clients directly served by programs. RBA also sets a framework for community involvement and partnership, identifying where you are now and determining what strategies you will use to make the changes you are seeking.

Best Start’s framework for evaluation includes looking at population level change as well as impact of individuals and families directly served by our programs. The following graphic is a representation of Best Start’s whole evaluation framework:BSK data chart

Performance Measures

will be specific to each program and developed during the contract development process in partnership with funded partners. Performance measures are about those served by a Best Starts funded program.  Performance measures will answer the questions

  • How much did we do?
  • How well did we do it?
  • Is anyone better off?

Population Indicators (Headline and Secondary Indicators)

are aspirational indicators that quantify what is happening for King County overall, not just those served by Best Starts.  These indicators help us understand how the Best Starts for Kids initiative and other community efforts are contributing together to population-level improvements in health and well-being.

In keeping with King County’s commitment to Equity and Social Justicedata will be disaggregated, or separated, in as many ways as possible while still protecting confidentiality, so that we can compare groups with different characteristics. This will vary depending on how data were collected and reported.



The Best Starts for Kids Data and Evaluation Team will work to keep the Best Starts Indicators as up-to-date as possible. Many of the Best Starts headline and secondary indicators rely on data from annual or biennial population-level surveys. Frequency of individual dataset availability is documented in the notes section of each indicator visualization.

Additional data resources and general population demographic data are available at Communities Count.

For more information and updates about the Best Starts for Kids initiative, please visit the Best Starts website or visit the Best Starts Blog.

We want to hear from you! If you have a question about the Best Starts for Kids Indicators or suggestions for how we can make this site more useful to you, your organization, or your community, please get in touch with the Best Starts Data and Evaluation Team by emailing BSK.Data@kingcounty.gov.

Contact Us

Phone 206-263-9105

TTY Relay: 711

Fax: 206-296-5260

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