Considerations in Applying Benefit-Cost Analysis to Preventive Interventions for Children, Youth, and Families Workshop Summary (2014) / Chapter Skim
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1 Introduction and Themes of the Workshop
1 Introduction and Themes of the Workshop
Pages 1-8
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. For example, a 2006 benefit-cost analysis performed by the Washington State Institute for Public Policy demonstrated that by investing in a portfolio of evidence-based crime prevention programs, the Washington State legislature could reduce crime rates, avoid the need to construct a new prison, and save taxpayers $2 billion 1 The planning committee's role was limited to planning the workshop, and the workshop summary has been prepared by the workshop rapporteurs as a factual summary of what occurred at the workshop.
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held a workshop on November 18–19, 2013, in Washington, DC, titled "Standards for Benefit-Cost Analysis of Preventive Interventions for Children, Youth, and Families." The workshop constituted the first phase of a possible two-part effort directed toward guiding future benefitcost studies and enhancing the relevance of benefit-cost analysis to governments and other organizations wanting to make sound prevention decisions. The workshop brought together leading practitioners in the field, researchers who study the methodological and analytic dimensions of benefit-cost analysis, and representatives of organizations that use the results of benefit-cost analyses to shape and implement public policies.
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How could research be used to create policy models that can help in form policy and budget decisions, analogous to the benefit-cost model developed by the Washington State Institute for Public Policy? What is the role of meta-analysis in the application of benefit-cost anal ysis to prevention programs?
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The session moderators who participated in the final panel discussion were Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, the Virginia and Leonard Marx Professor of Child Development at Teachers College and the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University, who also chaired the planning committee for the workshop; Janet Currie, the Henry Putnam Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University; Jorge Delva, professor of social work and associate dean for research in the School of Social Work at the University of Michigan; Roseanne Flores, associate professor in the Department of Psychology at Hunter College of the City University of New York; J David Hawkins, endowed professor of prevention and founding director of the Social Development Research Group at the University of Washington School of Social Work; Melanie Lutenbacher, associate professor of nursing and medicine at Vanderbilt University; and Gary VanLandingham, director of the Results First Initiative, a joint project of the Pew Charitable Trusts and the John D
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. The field of benefit-cost analysis could benefit from the development of standards in many different areas, said both Brooks-Gunn and Currie, including assessment of the cost of interventions, assigning values to outcomes, the use of randomized controlled trials and other experimental designs, applying discount rates, incorporating uncertainty into results, reconciling approaches across clearinghouses, and translating research results into a format useable by policy makers.
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Clearinghouses to Disseminate the Results of Benefit-Cost Analyses Clearinghouses can play a critical role in collecting and disseminating information, but, as VanLandingham observed, greater uniformity in the formats used to gather, analyze, and report data could make results more useable. Clearinghouses also could serve a useful function by providing all the information that may be of value to policy makers, not just the positive results.
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Eagerness for Results With tight budgets and demands for accountability, policy makers and others are eager for information about which policies work, which policies do not work, and which interventions are cost beneficial. Policy makers also can enable benefit-cost analyses when they are developing and authorizing programs, noted Flores, especially if they are engaged in communication with researchers.
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Chapter 4 looks at several technical issues that arise in benefit-cost analyses, including the validity of research designs other than randomized controlled trials, the treatment of uncertainty, and discount rates. Chapter 5 considers benefit-cost analyses from the perspectives of several users of the results of those analyses.
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