Measuring Performance: An Introduction to Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA)

Abstract

Data Envelopment Analyses (DEA) is a methodology that has been used to evaluate the efficiency of entities (e.g., programs, organizations etc.) which are responsible for utilizing resources to obtain outputs of interest. It has been used to evaluate activities as varied as public schools, hospital surgical units, and real-property maintenance for the U.S. Air Force. DEA is a fractional programming model that can include multiple outputs and inputs without recourse to a priori weights (as in index number approaches) and without requiring explicit specification of functional relations between inputs and outputs (as in regression approaches). It computes a scalar measure of efficiency and determines efficient levels of inputs and outputs for the organizations under evaluation.