|
cost |
|
cost estimates |
|
cost analysis |
|
cost-benefit |
|
cost-effectiveness |
Reducing violence can result in financial savings for communities. According to a 1990 study, there is an estimated savings to society of $67,989 for treating a child molester rather than not. Similarly, the National Research Council reported on a study showing that a sports and recreation program located in a housing project was far less expensive than the previous cost of juvenile criminal behavior. Likewise, community-based juvenile corrections programs were found to be quite effective in reducing recidivism and considerably cost-effective compared to the costs of imprisonment.
What Works in Preventing Rural Violence: Strategies, Risk Factors, and Assessment Tools,
Amherst H. Wilder Foundation, 1995, p. 4.
In the case of domestic violence prevention, cost-effectiveness means that the cost of the prevention program to society is less than the cost of the domestic violence to society when that prevention program does not take place.
Cost-effectiveness is basically a more technical form of cost-benefit, although these terms are frequently used interchangeably.
To say that a program is specifically cost-effective is to say that:
-
the program is cost-beneficial;
-
the program has used its resources wisely; and also that
-
the specific cost of the program – per unit of service provided -- to a community is less than the specific cost to a community – per capita (per person in that community) -- of the domestic violence that program prevents.
Clearly, the terms cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness overlap. To say that one prevention program is more cost-effective than another is to say that one program produces certain results for less cost than another model, or that Program A produces the desired results at a higher (number served) rate than Program B at the same or lower cost.
We must probe quite deeply to determine the true impact of our programs. For example, simply showing a video about intimate partner violence to over 2,000 college students does not necessarily mean that there has been a change in the students’ behavior. We must ask ourselves:
-
Does this video project become more cost-beneficial or more cost-effective simply because more students have seen it?
-
What if seeing this video made absolutely NO difference in the understanding of – and consequent prevention of – intimate partner violence among these students?
-
What if, years later, the rates of intimate partner violence in their partnerships/marriages were the same as these rates for others who had not seen this video?
-
What are the effects of 2,000 students seeing this video?
-
Does viewing this video cause the viewer to change her/his behavior in intimate partner relationships?
-
At a rate of nine dollars per student who viewed this video, how much change in current and future behaviors do we want to see to conclude that this project was at least somewhat if not enormously cost-effective?
Again, to say that a prevention program is cost-effective means that that program is measurably efficient and effective in accomplishing its prevention-related goals. These goals must be clear for their outcomes to be measurable. Because overarching goals such as the prevention – elimination or reduction – of further and/or first time violence are noble but difficult to measure in small program result increments, more specific sub-goals must be named. We cannot emphasize enough that prevention outcomes need to be specific and measurable in order to generate useful data to make your case.
For example, we might say that we are showing a certain number of college community members a video about intimate partner violence with the goals of:
-
Changing a majority of the viewers’ knowledge/awareness about intimate partner violence; and,
-
Finding that a certain percent of those who watched the video actually “put the information acquired to work” or did something different as a result of seeing the video.