SpiritLevel was created because a group of voluntary organisations working with young people recognised the need to demonstrate the effectiveness of their work to both internal and external audiences in valid, robust and reliable terms.

Much of the voluntary sector's work is not readily amenable to quantitative measures and no matter how desirable outcome measures may be, it would be inappropriate, even unrealistic, to attempt outcome measurement owing to the context of the work or short-term nature of the contact with the young people. Yet there will have been progress (soft outcomes/distance travelled) made towards the longer-term objectives to which the organisation, young person and funding agencies aspire.

There is an undeniable need to measure the progress/distance travelled by a young person towards a long-term outcome; consequently a study was carried out to identify a tool that could measure this objectively and credibly.

The first task was to identify and consider existing instruments used in the field and to interview the people developing new tools. However, all had characteristics that made them unusable in the manner desired. Based on the absence of a suitable existing instrument, or evidence that any of those in development would meet the criteria the literature indicated were essential for scientific validity, it was agreed to pilot a quality of life (QOL) profile developed by the University of Toronto. The authors of the QOL had demonstrated its scientific validity and a pilot would determine whether it had the potential to be a reliable measure of distance travelled.

Piloting began in the autumn of 1999 and continued until March 2000 and the progress made presented at a seminar organised in collaboration with the Department for Education & Employment (now the department for Education & Skills) on 12th April 2000.