Assignment 2: Economic Evaluation Critical Appraisal Detailed Assessment Information Step 1: Find your economic evaluation Choose a published evaluation of cost-effectiveness or cost-utility of a health intervention that interests you. Tips: In making your selection, bear in mind the definition of economic evaluation as a comparison of two or more options in terms of their costs and their benefits. A google search will be more than adequate. I suggest you choose an article published in a public health or medical journal rather than an economics journal. And please obtain a pdf copy of your article that you can send to me. Step 2: Critically appraise the evaluation Use Drummond’s ten-step checklist to structure your critical appraisal of the article. A copy of the checklist is attached to this document, or it can be found herel Please use only this ten-question version. There are longer ‘tick-box’ versions of the checklist available (see the reference to Drummond and Jefferson for example), which should not be used. I’ve included the Drummond and Jefferson paper because it provides useful information about what to consider in your review. Feel free to use the 10 questions as section headings to structure your review. The sub-questions should just be used as prompts to what to consider under each section heading. Tip: See the example by Chris Doran for what I have in mind, but note there will be no marks for anyone choosing the same article to critique as the one that Chris reviews! Note also that I am not endorsing his review. He may be wrong in what he says! When you have finished your critique assign a score from 0-100 to reflect your subjective assessment of the study’s quality … give it a mark! Please do this before you consider step 3. Step 3: Score the article formally using the QHES The Quality of Health Economic Studies instrument is closely related to Drummond’s ten-step checklist but it also allows you to score the quality of the study more formally. There are sixteen questions that you answer yes/ no according to whether you think the article meets the criteria. Each question then has a weight (see Table 1 in the article by Offman). Each yes answer scores 1 and you compute a total quality score for the article by multiplying each yes answer by the weight assigned to that question and summing the result. Step 4: Prepare a report Prepare an academic report, detailing your considerations from the two assessments. Include an introduction to your report, and finish with a summary of your findings. Step 5: Compare the results of your two assessments This step is optional – it is not part of the assignment, but may be an interesting exercise. Compare your assessment of the article’s merits in step 2 with the score that you arrive at in step 3. If there is a big difference, perhaps share your reflections on what might be causing it. Any questions of clarification? – Pose them on LMS so that everyone can share the answers Below a few references you can use for your assignment: Chiou, C. F. et al. (2003). Development and validation of a grading system for the quality of cost-effectiveness studies. Medical Care, 41, 32-44. Doran. C. (2010). Critique of an economic evaluation using the Drummond checklist. Applied Health Economics and Health Policy, 8, 357-359. Drummond, M. F. et al. (1997). Methods for the Economic Evaluation of Health Care Programmes. Retrieved from  Guidelines for authors and peer reviewers of economic submissions to the BMJ. British Medical Journal, 313, 275-283. Offman, J. J. et al. (2003). Examining the value and quality of health economic analyses: implications of utilizing the QHES. Journal of Managed Care Pharmacy, 9, 53-61. Word length: I take the view that as postgraduate students you are best able to determine how long your answer has to be. My only advice is not so short that you risk not answering the question, and not so long that you risk burying your insights in amongst too much irrelevant or duplicated material. Marking Guide Select the link to view the marking guide for assignment 2. Referencing Style You can discuss the assignment and the readings with your peers but the submitted work has to be your own. Use of published material needs to be correctly acknowledged in the references. Direct quotations need to be in quotation marks and suitably referenced in the APA6 referencing style, and you should avoid lengthy quotations by expressing arguments in your own words. This is the only way I can determine that you understand the material.

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