Schools bear the burden of funding the majority of the services received by children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) with the assumption that spent resources will result in meaningful positive outcomes for these students. Interventions lacking empirical support remain popular in schools despite lacking or limited evidence that students will experience positive outcomes. Economic evaluation methods provide a useful method of understanding the time and financial influences of these interventions. This study introduces a novel use of economic evaluation methods to examine the time and financial costs associated with two popular interventions lacking strong empirical evidence of effectiveness. The results of this study suggest that implementing either emerging interventions or those determined to be ineffective or harmful can pose a significant cost to schools with varying likelihood of benefit to children with ASD. Financial risk increases when implementing ineffective or harmful interventions in the form of opportunity cost. Implications and further application of these methods to research synthesis methods to better support educators selecting interventions is discussed.

学校承担资助自闭症谱系障碍 (ASD) 儿童接受的大部分服务的负担，假设所花费的资源将为这些学生带来有意义的积极成果。尽管缺乏或有限的证据表明学生将获得积极成果，但缺乏实证支持的干预措施在学校仍然很受欢迎。经济评估方法为了解这些干预措施的时间和财务影响提供了一种有用的方法。本研究引入了一种经济评估方法的新用途，以检查与两种缺乏有效实证证据的流行干预措施相关的时间和财务成本。这项研究的结果表明，实施新出现的干预措施或那些被确定为无效或有害的干预措施可能会给学校带来巨大的成本，而这些措施对自闭症儿童的益处的可能性各不相同。当以机会成本的形式实施无效或有害的干预措施时，财务风险会增加。讨论了这些方法对研究综合方法的影响和进一步应用，以更好地支持教育工作者选择干预措施。