Benefit-Based Design
Use your resources effectively by focusing on serving clients that will benefit the most
We can help you:
- Identify the characteristics of clients who are benefiting the most from your services.
- Develop or select the right tool to make programming decisions based on clients’ levels of severity or need for your services.
Benefit-based design helps you demonstrate your impacts
The chart below shows pre-post data from a fictional weight-loss program. A school obtained students’ weights at the beginning of the year. The school could only refer a limited number of students to an innovative lifestyle and weight-loss program. The school referred those students that needed to lose the most weight (in this case, anyone weighing over 200 pounds). The weights of both the students in and not in the program were collected again at the end of year.
By looking at the two groups’ pre-post weights, we can see the impact of the program. The solid grey lines are the students’ actual weights. The dotted line depicts what the program participants’ weights would have been if they did not enter the program. The dotted line is extended from the trend line for the students not in the program. By looking at the difference at the Cut-off eligibility criteria, we see that the program helped the students lose an average of 25 lbs.
Benefit-based designs can be used with any continuous measure that predicts how much clients will benefit from services. The tools can measure such things as self-esteem, financial literacy, addiction severity, etc. You could even use population factors, such as neighborhood crime or disease rates.
Are you already providing services based on eligibility criteria or a cut-off score?
- We can help you use your data to provide accurate cost-benefit estimates.