Skip to main content

Table 5 Incremental costs, effectiveness and cost-effectiveness (without ‘provisionally included’ code option)

From: Use of cost-effectiveness analysis to compare the efficiency of study identification methods in systematic reviews

  Safety first Double screening Single screening Single screening with text mining
Resource use and costs—research staff
Resource use item Time (min) Unit cost (£) Cost (£) Time (min) Unit cost (£) Cost (£) Time (min) Unit cost (£) Cost (£) Time (min) Unit cost (£) Cost (£)
 Teleconferences to establish inter-rater reliability 1200 1.175 1410 1200 1.175 1410 – – – – – –
 Title-abstract screening 24,954 1.175 29,321 24,954 1.175 29,321 12,477 0.97 12,103 4863 0.97 4717
 Teleconferences to resolve disagreements about title-abstract eligibility (coding) decisions – – – 5400 1.175 6345 – – – – – –
 Full-text retrieval 9932 0.97 9634 8752 0.97 8489 9524 0.97 9238 7876 0.97 7640
 Full-text screening 24,830 1.175 29,175 21,880 1.175 25,709 23,810 1.175 27,977 19,690 1.175 23,136
 Teleconferences to resolve disagreements about full-text eligibility (coding) decisions 2950 1.175 3466 2950 1.175 3466 2950 1.175 3466 2950 1.175 3466
Total cost £73,006 £74,740 £52,784 £38,959
Incremental cost £34,047 £35,781 £13,825 –
Effectiveness—number of inappropriate exclusions avoided
 Recall 100 % 100 % 99 % 95 %
 Number of eligible studies identified 169 169 168 161
Incremental effectiveness 8 8 7 –
Cost-effectiveness—incremental cost per inappropriate exclusion avoided (ICER)
Base case £4256 £4473 a £1975 –
 Sensitivity analysis 1a £2718 £2935a £1447 –
 Sensitivity analysis 1b £5794 £6010a £2502 –
 Sensitivity analysis 2a £3878 £4187a £1629 –
 Sensitivity analysis 2b £4633 £4634a £2321 –
 Sensitivity analysis 3a £4256 £4076b £1975 –
 Sensitivity analysis 3b £4278 £4892a £2001 –
 Sensitivity analysis 4a £2128 £2236a £987 –
 Sensitivity analysis 4b £6384 £6709a £2962 –
 Sensitivity analysis 5a £4276 £4493a £1998 –
 Sensitivity analysis 5b £4287 £4504a £2013 –
  1. All costs are expressed in 20XX GBP (£) prices
  2. aDominated by ‘safety first’
  3. bDominates ‘safety first’
  4. The italics highlight rows containing the principal results
Back to article page