Recent years have shown a growing interest by researchers and policy makers for qualitative indicators that measure international labour standards. This has risen because of the growing concern in the economics of labour standards, socially responsible investing, and recognizing that quantitative statistics have limited value for analysis. This paper compares its method for qualitative indicators with other constructed indicators relating to trade union rights such as by the OECD and the NGO Freedom House. It addresses definitional validity, reproducibility, and problems with information sources and concludes that to improve these indicators, the key is to obtain more information sources that provide systematic and detailed information on trade union rights that is consistent across countries and over time. It also suggests including a small number of carefully designed questions into labour force surveys to develop better quantitative indicators of trade union rights. Overall, the purpose of these indicators serves to have more significant comparison data across countries.