The Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA) has launched a new Costing Pre-analysis Planning template to foster collaboration between cost and impact evaluation research, developed by CEGA’s Cost Transparency Initiative.
CEGA developed and field-tested this cost pre-analysis planning tool on five cash-benchmarking impact evaluations completed in 2023. Throughout this engagement, CEEGA encountered wariness about the reliability and reproducibility of cost estimates and uncertainty about the underlying need for cost “research” among academic research economists. CEGA now routinely completes Costing Pre-analysis Planning templates in advance of conducting cost research, with costing-pre analysis plans in place on three active impact evaluations, Lishe Bora, Titukulane, and Takunda.
The Costing Pre-analysis Planning template is designed using LaTeX so that it can either efficiently integrate with the pre-analysis plan (PAP) of an impact evaluation or serve as a standalone draft of a costing report that is fit for publication. The tool includes a structured outline and prompts to motivate the cost analysis, define the primary and secondary cost research questions, and identify the cost-relevant features of the intervention design and delivery.
Cost pre-analysis plans document cost study designs and transparently share data, methods, and planned empirical analyses. As with PAPs for impact evaluations, costing PAPs minimize the risk of “cherry picking” specifications, such as narrowly-defining cost inclusion criteria that do not reflect the full cost of delivery or that only produce interesting cost-efficiency metrics. The tool improves collaboration around the use of sensitive and highly detailed expenditure data and the chances for better partnerships with decision makers on their cost research questions.
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