Table 3.

Key information for reporting economic evaluations

Topic	Essential information to communicate in a report	Standards section
Economic evaluation frame	• Research, policy, budgeting, and/or decision-making context in which the economic evaluation was sought • Specific empirical question to be addressed in economic evaluation • Analytic perspective, e.g., societal, government • Time period over which costs and/or benefits will be estimated	I.1, I.4
Intervention Description	• Intervention goal(s), theory of change, and/or logic model • Population served, delivery setting, major intervention components • Location, time, key features of context in which intervention was or will be delivered • Comparison condition, e.g., no program, alternative program	I.2
Intervention impactsa	• Research design that yielded impacts, including any limitations on ability to draw causal inference • Key characteristics of treatment and comparison groups, including any differences and how they were controlled for • Length of follow-up and attrition rates for each condition • Quality and sources of data and measures used • Summary of impacts, including magnitude, significant and nonsignificant findings, significance levels, standard errors or standard deviations, methods of estimation • Description of plausible additional impacts that were not measured, why they were not measured, and implications for the economic evaluation • Any limitations to generalizability, internal and external validity of impacts	I.3
Cost estimates	• Whether analysis is being conducted prospectively or retrospectively • Method for estimating costs, e.g., ingredients method • Cost categories included, e.g., labor, equipment, materials and supplies, office space, travel; any costs that were excluded and reasons for exclusion • Method for costing volunteer time and other donated resources, overhead, and other resources not paid for directly • Scope of costs included, e.g., adoption, implementation, sustainability, training and technical assistance, including rationale for any exclusions • Source of resource and unit cost or price data • Any limitations to generalizability and validity of resource, price, and cost data	II.1–II.5
Benefits estimatesa	• Summary of impacts included in the benefit-cost analysis, those not included, and rationale for inclusion or exclusion • For each impact, whether benefit was estimated directly or indirectly • Method and model for estimating benefits from each included impact • Length of time over which benefits were estimated or projected • Any negative benefits and how they were handled • Sources of data used to derive benefits estimates, including support for any shadow prices used • Implications of impacts that were not monetized on benefits estimates • Any limitations to generalizability and validity of benefits estimates, including modeling as well as data sources used in the analysis	III.1–III.3
Discounting and inflation	• Year in which constant dollars are reported • Inflation indices used in costs and/or benefits analysis • Discount rate, including range used in sensitivity analysis • Time or age discounted to, e.g., participant age, program start	IV.1, IV.2
Summary metrics	• Total, per-participant average, and marginal costs of the intervention expressed in constant discounted dollars • Total and per-participant benefits from the intervention, including description of how potential double counting was handled, expressed in constant discounted dollars in the same base year as costsa • Net present value in constant discounted dollars (total and per participant)a • Additional summary metrics, e.g., benefit-cost ratio, payback period, internal rate of return and any relevant limitationsa • Relevant disaggregated costs, e.g., fixed and variable; costs by relevant time period; costs by stakeholder; capacity-building, implementation, sustainability costs; labor, supplies, space, travel, overhead costs • Relevant disaggregated benefits, e.g., according to beneficiary; by impact; by sectora • Standard errors and confidence intervals associated with each metric	IV.3–IV.5
Handling of uncertainty	• Method used to evaluate implications of uncertainty, e.g., Monte Carlo, bootstrapping, sensitivity to changes in key parameters • Implications for summary metrics and analytic conclusions	V.1
Conclusions	• Statement(s) relating analysis findings to original question • Generalizability, replicability, external validity, and limitations of conclusions reached	VI.1

^aThese elements are not required for a cost analysis