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Valuing Our Communities: Ethical Considerations for Economic Evaluation of Community‐Based Prevention
Author(s) -
Crowley Max,
Jones Damon
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
american journal of community psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.113
H-Index - 112
eISSN - 1573-2770
pISSN - 0091-0562
DOI - 10.1002/ajcp.12200
Subject(s) - psychological intervention , health psychology , public health , intervention (counseling) , public economics , economic evaluation , community psychology , scale (ratio) , cost–benefit analysis , value (mathematics) , public relations , economic cost , public health interventions , sociology , psychology , political science , economics , social psychology , medicine , computer science , law , nursing , physics , neoclassical economics , quantum mechanics , machine learning , psychiatry , microeconomics
Restricted public budgets and increasing efforts to link the impact of community interventions to public savings have increased the use of economic evaluation. While this type of evaluation can be important for program planning, it also raises important ethical issues about how we value the time of local stakeholders who support community interventions. In particular, researchers navigate issues of scientific accuracy, institutional inequality, and research utility in their pursuit of even basic cost estimates. We provide an example of how we confronted these issues when estimating the costs of a large‐scale community‐based intervention. Principles for valuing community members’ time and conducting economic evaluations of community programs are discussed.