Background: As research moves from questions of efficacy (can an intervention work) to questions of effectiveness (does an intervention work in practice), questions of efficiency (what are the costs and consequences of the intervention) become increasingly important. The incorporation of economic evaluation into the planning and execution of effectiveness research brings with it several practical and methodological benefits.

Objective: The goals of this article are to provide an overview of economic evaluation and its current use in the field of social welfare (social work, social services, etc.) as well as highlight and discuss benefits of economic evaluation.

Methods: This commentary describes and reviews relevant empirical and theoretical literature on this subject.

Results: This commentary suggests that there are several implications of the points made in the article for the development of standards of quality for effectiveness research