An Alternative Approach to Drug Policy Outcome Measurement

Abstract

The wide range of benefits from drug policy interventions makes evaluation complex. Existing outcome instruments do not provide an overall assessment of 'value', which limits their usefulness. Multiple attribute utility theory can address these aggregation issues. Being explicitly preference based, it has the advantage of transparency. Data were collected in order to investigate the feasibility of preference elicitation and use of alternative methods for outcome evaluation. The results of this investigation are promising. The data provided are consistent and intuitive. Using students' preferences for the 'end products' of drug interventions, the value attached to a premature death is found to outweigh that of averting a house burglary by between 100:1 and 550:1. This ratio is substantially higher than that implied by current resource allocation between different policy approaches. A simulated application of preference data to a published study is shown for demonstration purposes.

Key Words:

• Outcome measurement
• evaluation
• preference
• aggregation
• utility analysis