Chapter 9 & Readings Flashcards
_____________ involves going beyond knowledge (real or estimated) of program impact and attempting to determine how cost effective the program is at what it does and how it compares (in efficiency) to other programs, and then, given this knowledge, deciding whether the program is worth its costs and/or if the program should be replaced with another more efficient program.
Efficiency Assessment
Efficiency Assessment is the approach typically taken by ______. It is very important, however, that all evaluators (including you!) understand how to think about efficiency assessment because of the importance of costs and budgets and resource allocation in every organization
economists
Who said this, “perhaps the greatest value of efficiency analysis is that it forces us to think in a disciplined fashion about both costs and benefits….Most other types of evaluation focus mainly on the benefits.”
Peter Rossi
What are the 2 major types of efficiency assesment?
Benefit Cost analysis and assessment
Cos-effectiveness analysis and assessment
In ___________,monetary (i.e., dollar) values are estimated for the resources used (i.e., costs) and for the program effects (i.e., benefits), and these two components ________ are then compared to determine the worth of a program.
Benefit-cost analysis or cost-benefit analysis
costs and benefits
Key Idea 1: Benefit-cost analysis can be carried out according to different perspectives, and you will need to _____________ when conducting a benefit-cost analysis.
select a perspective
Three common accounting perspectives:
- individual or target perspective, the costs and benefits are listed that relate to the individuals in the program.
- the program sponsor perspective, the costs and benefits are listed that relate to the program sponsor.
- communal or society or national government perspective, the costs and benefits are listed that relate to the community or society.
Key Idea 2: The evaluator must list all costs and benefits and then quantify these costs and benefits.
The costs and benefits need to be converted to dollar units, and any benefits or costs occurring in the future must be discounted (i.e., converting them to their present value).
present value in this context is the value of a future benefit or cost in present dollar values
benefit-cost ratio
the total dollar benefits divided by the total dollar costs, where any costs and benefits that may occur in the future are converted to their discounted or present values.
A benefit-cost ratio of 1 is the break even point; a benefit-cost ratio that is less than one means that the costs are greater than the benefits; a benefit-cost ratio that is greater than one means that the benefits are greater than the costs (i.e., the desired result).
A benefit-cost ratio of 1 is the b_______; a benefit-cost ratio that is less than one means that the costs are greater than the benefits; a benefit-cost ratio that is greater than one means that the benefits are greater than the costs (i.e., the desired result).
break even point
A second way to compare the costs and benefits is to subtract the total costs from the total benefits and determine the __________. If the _______ is positive, the benefits are greater than the costs,
Net benefits
A third way to compare costs and benefits is the __________is popular in business and it is a measure of the profit made by the program calculated as a percentage of money spent on the program.
return on investment index
(a) subtract total costs from the gross or total benefits and (b) divide the number resulting from step “a” by the total costs
prospective benefit-cost analysis (or ex ante analysis) is done before or during the planning or development of a program
Prospective benefit-cost analysis
Prospective analysis is important in helping decision makers to decide whether to develop a full-fledged version of a program idea or to abandon the program idea.
before spending money, one should consider the potential benefits and costs.
absolute benefit-cost analysis
- Select an accounting perspective to use for the analysis (e.g., select the participant perspective, the program sponsor perspective, or the communal perspective).
- List the relevant costs (including opportunity costs and externalities) and benefits of the program. Also make any relevant distributional considerations if taking the communal perspective (e.g., conduct separate analyses for different groups and use weights for costs or benefits that reduce inequality).
- Determine or estimate the dollar values of the costs and benefits of the program.
- Calculate the benefit-cost ratio (i.e., dollar benefits divided by dollar costs), net benefits (i.e., dollar benefits minus dollar costs) and/or the return on investment index.
- Make a decision about the usefulness or worth of the program (or prospective program) and make your evaluative judgment and recommendations.
absolute benefit-cost analysis
- Select an accounting perspective to use for the analysis (e.g., select the participant perspective, the program sponsor perspective, or the communal perspective).
- List the relevant costs (including opportunity costs and externalities) and benefits of the program. Also make any relevant distributional considerations if taking the communal perspective (e.g., conduct separate analyses for different groups and use weights for costs or benefits that reduce inequality).
- Determine or estimate the dollar values of the costs and benefits of the program.
- Calculate the benefit-cost ratio (i.e., dollar benefits divided by dollar costs), net benefits (i.e., dollar benefits minus dollar costs) and/or the return on investment index.
- Make a decision about the usefulness or worth of the program (or prospective program) and make your evaluative judgment and recommendations.
comparative benefit-cost analysis
- Select an accounting perspective to use for the analysis (e.g., select the participant perspective, the program sponsor perspective, or the communal perspective).
- List the relevant costs (including opportunity costs and externalities) and benefits for each of the programs being compared. Also make any relevant distributional considerations if taking the communal perspective (e.g., conduct separate analyses for different groups and use weights for costs or benefits that reduce inequality).
- Determine or estimate the dollar values of the costs and benefits for each of the programs being compared.
- Calculate the benefit-cost ratio (i.e., dollar benefits divided by dollar costs), net benefits (i.e., dollar benefits minus dollar costs), and/or the return on investment index for each of the programs being compared.
- Make a decision about the usefulness or worth of the program (or prospective program) in relation to the other comparable programs and make your evaluative judgment and recommendations.
comparative benefit-cost analysis
- Select an accounting perspective to use for the analysis (e.g., select the participant perspective, the program sponsor perspective, or the communal perspective).
- List the relevant costs (including opportunity costs and externalities) and benefits for each of the programs being compared. Also make any relevant distributional considerations if taking the communal perspective (e.g., conduct separate analyses for different groups and use weights for costs or benefits that reduce inequality).
- Determine or estimate the dollar values of the costs and benefits for each of the programs being compared.
- Calculate the benefit-cost ratio (i.e., dollar benefits divided by dollar costs), net benefits (i.e., dollar benefits minus dollar costs), and/or the return on investment index for each of the programs being compared.
- Make a decision about the usefulness or worth of the program (or prospective program) in relation to the other comparable programs and make your evaluative judgment and recommendations.
———————— is based on cost and effect data (rather than cost and benefit data as in benefit-cost analysis). In Peter Rossi’s words, in cost-effectiveness analysis the evaluator determines “the efficacy of a program in achieving given intervention outcomes in relation to the program costs.”
Cost-effectiveness analysis
STEPS FOR A COST EFFECTIVENESS ANALYSIS
- DEVELOP A LIST
- DETERMINE THE DOLLAR VALUE
- DETERMINE TOTAL COSTS
STEPS FOR A COST EFFECTIVENESS ANALYSIS
- DEVELOP A LIST
- DETERMINE THE DOLLAR VALUE
- DETERMINE TOTAL COSTS
Why would one want to conduct a cost-effectiveness analysis rather than a benefit-cost analysis?
The answer is because it is difficult to convert many kinds of benefits to dollar units and, therefore, cost-effectiveness analysis is more practical and less controversial.
What are the 2 categories that quantitative designs can be broken into?
- Those used to determine the effectiveness of an intervention
- those that are descriptive in nature such as surveys
_________ means that an evaluator has controlled the effects of variables other than treatment, in order to say with confidence that the results occurs because the participants experienced the program or activity that is the independent variable.
Internal Validity
__________ means that the sample is representative of the population, and therefore that if the treatment is applied with another group of people from that population under similar circumstances, it should be effective there as well.
External validity
Threats to Internal Validity
History Maturation Testing Statistical regression Instrumentation Differential selection experimental mortality experiemental treatment diffusion compensatory rivalry by the control group compensatory eqalization of treatments Resentful demoralization of the control group
Threats to External Validity
Lack of explicit description of the independent variable
Multiple treatment interference
The Hawthorne effect
Novelty and disruption effects
Experimenter effects
pretest or posttest sensitization
different types of measurment for dependent variables
different times of measurement for dependent variables
_____________ is a threat to validity when the research involves use of extreme groups such as participants are either the high or low end of the socres on the dependent variable measure prior to the intervention.
Statistical Regression