Economic Evaluation Standards

How to Complete the Ratings

Start by looking through the list of items in the EESC to prime yourself with the information you should be looking for in a study or plan.

• Strategy 1

  • Read the study or plan in its entirety before starting your rating. This includes reviewing any supplemental materials and appendices. As you read, you can highlight information that is relevant to one of the EESC items. Once you are done reading, begin rating from the top of the list and refer back to the study as needed, especially to gather material for your rationales.

  • The advantage of this approach is that you have seen all the information the authors provide before start rating. This reduces the likelihood you will need to revisit your judgments. The disadvantage is that you may end up having to read the article 2-3 times to find everything you need. One trick that may help is, on the first read, strike out any long sections of text that have no information relevant to the economic evaluation. That way you’ll have a lot less to read the second and third times.

• Strategy 2

  • Start reading and rating at the same time. This feels faster, but the downside is that you are making judgments based only on what you have read so far and may often need to revise a rating and rationale as you acquire more information. For example, you may generally be expecting a lot of the analytical items to be addressed in the methods section but sometimes an issue is unexpectedly addressed later in the results, discussion, and even the limitations sections where authors may clarify what they did or did not do.

Providing Evidence to Support Your Rating

In the rationale column, it can be helpful to put the page number or section heading where you found the information, plus a short note to explain your assessment, e.g., what the authors did well or what you found unclear. You can copy and paste relevant text from the article to support your rating, keeping in the back of your mind what the study authors themselves might like to understand about the reasons for your rating, or what might be important for a decision maker to consider. You can check out the two completed EESC examples we have posted lower down on this webpage.

• Using EESC to Evaluate a Plan vs a Study

If you are applying the EESC to evaluate a plan you’re putting together for an economic evaluation, it would make sense for you to use the rationale column to jot down how you’re planning to address the item or to note issues that still need to be discussed among the research team and/or the audience for the study.