Delivered by Ingenta to: University of Toronto IP : 188.68.0.221 On: Mon, 20 Jun 2016 00:28:22 Copyright The Policy Press 229 © The Policy Press • 2009 • ISSN 1744 2648 research Evidence & Policy • vol 5 • no 3 • 2009 • 229-46 • 10.1332/174426409X463776 Including economic perspectives and evidence in Campbell reviews to inform policy and practice: a critical review of current approaches Ian Shemilt 1 and Miranda Mugford This paper evaluates current approaches to incorporating economic perspectives and evidence into systematic reviews, using 31 of the 33 reviews completed under the editorial control of The Campbell Collaboration. Of these, 74% incorporated economic perspectives, and 26% attempted to incorporate economic evidence by collecting and summarising data on resource use, costs and/or cost-effectiveness from primary studies.We conclude that while most Campbell reviews incorporate an economic dimension that is of potential utility to end users, the scope and quality of current approaches is limited. Background The Campbell Collaboration exists to help people make well-informed decisions about social and behavioural programmes and policies. Its vision is to bring about positive social change and to improve the quality of public and private services around the world by preparing, maintaining and disseminating a ‘world library’ of systematic reviews of existing social science evidence in education, crime and justice, and social welfare (The Campbell Collaboration, 2008). Campbell reviews assemble, select, critique and combine trustworthy data from multiple research studies on the benefcial and harmful efects of programmes and policies using systematic review and research synthesis methods, including meta- analysis (Becker et al, 2004).Their principal objective is to synthesise reliable evidence on ‘what works’ (in terms of the balance between benefcial and harmful efects) and to produce less selectively biased, more statistically powerful information for use in decision making, compared with evidence from single studies. Economics is the study of the optimal allocation of limited resources for the production of beneft to society (Samuelson and Nordhaus, 2005). Resources (or ‘resource inputs’) are human time and skills, equipment and raw materials, buildings, energy and any other inputs required to implement a programme or policy. As well as impacting on the resource inputs used in their production, programmes or policies may often, as a result of their benefcial or harmful efects, precipitate subsequent changes in downstream resource use (or ‘resource consequences’). An example of Key words systematic review • resource use • cost-effectiveness