The questions of the World Co-operative Monitor are mainly concentrated in three sections, namely, Organization Description, Financial Performance, and Operational Impact. In the Organization Description section, questions are designed to collect general data on organizations, such as the name, year founded, location of the organization's head- quarters, organization type, sector of activity, and so on.

Looking at the Financial Performance section, the choice of eco- nomic data to be collected is based on the analysis of the most recent developments of scientific thought concerning the measurement of the economic performance of co-operatives (Lerman and Parliament 1991; Austin et al. 2006; Marin-Sanchez and Melia-Martì 2006; López-Es- pinosa et al. 2009; Beaubien 2011; Beaubien and Rixon 2012).

Looking at the Operational Impact section, the questionnaire focuses mainly on the governance and ownership structures and on employees. The choice of data related to members is justified by the objective for which a co-operative is formed.

Regarding the methodology used for data collection, the purpose is to provide a new process with respect to the methodology used by the Global 300 in data collection, integration, and analysis, culminating in the creation of a regularly updated database containing not only economic data, but also employee-related and other social data about the largest co-operatives worldwide. In selecting the tools for data collection, a dual strategy was pursued that involved (a) defining an integration process to create a single database from existing databases and other data collected by national associations, research institutes, and other organizations and (b) the development of a questionnaire used to collect new data.

With respect to the first strategy, in recent years, several federations and research centres have initiated national or sectorial plans for the systematic collection of economic data in order to publicize lists of the largest co-operatives at the national and sectorial levels. In addition, some private companies have developed regional databases that capture personal and economic data about co-operative organizations from different parts of the world.

The questionnaire explores different aspects of the organizational structure of co-operatives (e.g., types of organization, internal procedures, principles, etc.), and includes questions about economic, social, and financial data. The questionnaire is made available in English, Spanish, and French in both online and PDF formats. The aim of this is to increase the number of languages in which the questionnaire is distributed.

Of these two paths, online data collection presents the greater challenge, especially given the need to explain the objectives of the project to individual co-operatives, as well as the need to ensure that co-operatives take ownership in realizing that a greater availability and variety of data can lead to achieving the objective of visibility, and, above all, recognition of the importance of the co-operative sector, as described above. Despite these difficulties, the questionnaire has the greatest potential for the project: it facilitates collection of a wider range of data than is available in existing databases, and since definitions of the data are common and detailed, the economic and social data collected are robust, thereby allowing for a full comparison of co-operatives in different countries.