Structured Abstract
Research design and methods
The project team will iteratively design the Standards Template with a prototype created for cost analysis standards under the IES-funded Cost Analysis in Practice (CAP) Project. Additions will include the SEEESP CEA standards, the SEEESP reporting checklist, the CAP Project checklist for identifying comparable studies to use in comparative CEAs, and features to facilitate inter-rater reliability checks and comparisons of studies. Further development and modification will occur through multiple reviewers applying the Standards Template to forty cost analyses and CEAs to examine usability, inter-rater reliability, and accuracy.
User Testing: Nineteen researchers and district office evaluators will use the Standards Template to evaluate two published studies and one study they are currently planning or conducting. User testing will take place over the course of the project to provide iterative improvements on the Standards Template and a check of the final product.
Use in Applied Education Research: The project team envisions multiple uses of the toolkit. This includes planning rigorous economic evaluations of currently operating programs, reviewing cost analyses or CEAs in journal submissions, conference sessions, grant proposals and comparing the methodological and analytic choices made in completed economic evaluations.
People and institutions involved
IES program contact(s)
Project contributors
Products and publications
Products: The project team will produce an Economic Evaluation Standards Toolkit that will include an Excel-based Standards Template listing the cost analysis and CEA standards described in the Standards for Economic Evaluation of Educational and Social Programs (SEEESP), a system for rating planned or completed cost analyses and CEAs against each standard, references to published studies that model each standard, and links or references to resources that can help analysts meet each standard. The website will include a demonstration video. Additionally, the research team will produce at least two completed templates to serve as examples and a review paper written after evaluating a selection of published cost analyses and CEAs using the Standards Template. This paper will summarize the ways in which cost analyses and CEAs need to be improved and recommend modifications to the SEEESP. They will present the toolkit at conferences and workshops.
ERIC Citations: Find available citations in ERIC for this award here.
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Questions about this project?
To answer additional questions about this project or provide feedback, please contact the program officer.
