Participants learn the basics of four common, alternative strategies for modeling, evaluating, managing, and systematically improving key relationships between resources consumed and outcomes produced in health and human service: cost analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis, cost-benefit analysis, and cost-utility analysis. Quantitative and qualitative understandings of what occurs between the "costs in" and "outcomes out" is further enhanced by a fifth model that distinguishes between performance of and participation in program activities, and between desired and actual change in biopsychosocial processes responsible for program outcomes. Examples of each step in understanding and improving relationships between resources used, procedures implemented, biopsychosocial processes altered or instilled, and outcomes achieved are drawn from evaluation research in health, mental health, and substance abuse treatment. In addition, a clinical trial is reanalyzed to illustrate how cost-inclusive evaluation can enhance the ability of applied research to help us systematically understand and manage human service systems.
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