6. Costing an evaluation

6.1 Identifying cost items
6.2 Establishing a budget

6.1 Identifying cost items

There are various dollar costs associated with carrying out an evaluation. These can include:

• salaries of external consultant(s) and/or internal staff (if not funded from elsewhere)
• wages for casuals employed for data collection, entry or analysis
• training/staff development costs associated with data collection and analysis methods and overall evaluation strategies
• data collection costs:
• costs of developing or purchasing evaluation instruments
• costs of printing (of questionnaires etc.)
• other costs involved in carrying out the collection (e.g. hiring of recording equipment, facilities, distribution and collection of surveys etc.)
• travel and accommodation costs
• data processing and analysis costs (e.g. for keyboard input of data, optical scanning, purchase of statistical software packages)
• costs of printing reports
• miscellaneous office costs — telephone, fax, administrative support.

6.2 Establishing a budget

A common 'rule of thumb' is to allocate around 10% of the total project budget to evaluation costs. The cost percentage may be higher for complex evaluations using a raft of data collection techniques and with a heavy reliance on outside consultants. Alternatively, the cost percentage may be lower than 10% if the evaluation is quite modest, with only internal staff involved, and if some of the overhead costs are born by the school/faculty.