 Cost-utility analysis in educational needs assessmentJohn A. Ross Evaluation and Program Planning, 2008, vol. 31, issue 4, 356-367 Abstract: Educational needs assessments (hereafter NAs) are inattentive to cost considerations and are frequently dominated by elite stakeholder groups. In this article I make a case for adopting a cost-utility approach, illustrating the argument with data generated in a NA of central library services in a Canadian school district. Using survey data from eight stakeholder groups, I found that (1) NAs based on the service preferences of a single stakeholder group can be misleading; (2) service preferences can be integrated into a single set of priorities, even when there are disagreements, by using the stakeholder group as the unit of analysis and assigning weights that privilege input from knowledgeable respondents; and (3) that the ranking of service operations produced by user preferences was not significantly correlated with the ranking produced by integrating preferences with costs. Cost-utility analysis would be more helpful if the utilities represented rigorously determined benefits of the services assessed, as well as stakeholder perceptions of the value of these benefits. Cost-utility analysis in NA will not reach its potential until cost considerations are routinely included in educational program evaluations. Keywords: Cost-utility; Needs; assessment; Educational; evaluation (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:epplan:v:31:y:2008:i:4:p:356-367 Access Statistics for this article Evaluation and Program Planning is currently edited by Jonathan A. Morell More articles in Evaluation and Program Planning from Elsevier |
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