Examining the Cost-Effectiveness of Intensive Interventions: Implementation Costs from the Teacher and Student Perspective

Intensive interventions are time- and resource-demanding interventions designed to be implemented with a single student with unique learning needs. Economic evaluation provides a methodology for evaluating the time and material resource costs of implementing these interventions to provide detailed feasibility information for educators considering their implementation. This study presents a cost analysis of the time and materials required to implement an intensive intervention, I-Connect, and compares those costs to the reported effects, from the perspective of the intervention agent and recipient (i.e., teacher and student) using time as the primary cost metric. The results suggest the total time cost of implementing I-Connect falls within the time teachers and students are likely to have available. Furthermore, teachers will likely find I-Connect to be a cost-effective option for generating a 50% increase in on-task behavior if they have an initial 40 min of available time to become familiar with the intervention procedures, prepare the intervention, train the student to engage in self-monitoring, and initiate a 10-min session of I-Connect. Limitations and future research directions for the economic evaluation of intensive interventions are discussed.