How should Program Evaluation Standards inform the use of cost-benefit analysis in evaluation?

CBA is one tool in an evaluator's toolbox, to be used in contextually responsive ways, and in combination with other methods. It's not a gold standard.

I'm very happy to have a paper included in the Journal of Multidisciplinary Evaluation special issue on the Program Evaluation Standards. In this open-access paper, I argue the case for cost-benefit analysis (CBA) to be conducted in keeping with these Standards.

CBA can be understood as a form of evaluative reasoning - a way of synthesising criteria, st…