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Crime Reduction Programme: Guidance Note 1: Analysis of Costs and Benefits: Guidance for Evaluators

NCJ Number
180611
Author(s)
Sanjay Dhiri; Sam Brand
Editor(s)
Peter Goldblatt
Date Published
1999
Length
48 pages
Annotation
This manual provides step-by-step guidance to evaluators conducting a cost-effectiveness analysis of programs conducted as part of the Great Britain Home Office Crime Reduction Program (CRP), an evidence-based approach to crime reduction through efforts targeting risk factors, geographic locations, specific crimes, and specific offender categories.
Abstract
The document includes the methodological principles, processes, and standards and underlying a cost-effectiveness analysis, and specifies the central tasks and responsibilities of evaluators. It also focuses on the practical issues of how to collect and analyze information on the costs of intervention and how to relate this information to outputs and outcomes. The introduction advises evaluators to use the manual as a reference document for devising a methodology for analyzing costs. The guidelines aim to aid an evaluation of how cost-effective an intervention has been and not to appraise an intervention in advance. Individual sections explain techniques for analyzing costs and benefits; data sources, identifying and quantifying inputs and outcomes, the measurement of cost and outcome streams; risk, uncertainty, and sensitivity analysis; testing of replicability; and reporting results. Tables, footnotes, appended discussions of measurement issues and discounting and risk analysis, and 30 references