The Client Service Receipt Inventory (CSRI) is a research instrument developed by Martin Knapp and Jennifer Beecham in the mid 1980s to collect information on service utilisation, income, accommodation and other cost-related variables. It’s primary purpose is to allow resource use patterns to be descibed and support costs to be estimated using an appropriate unit cost.

Typically, the CSRI has five sections:

• Background client information, such as study identification number, age, gender and other socio-demographic information. It may also include past admissions/discharges from hospital or participation in special programmes depending on the study and information available.
• Accommodation and living situation which can identify housing tenure or facility type and region (some geographic areas are more costly to live in than others).
• Employment history, earnings and benefits which may assist with calculations of cost of lost employment due to poor health.
• A record of services that may be used usually grouped into subsections such as hospital care, primary care, community-based specialist or generaic health care, social care etc. Questions on prescribed medication can be included here.
• Information about support from informal carers.

The CSRI can be used at multiple points within a study, thus tracking changes over time.

One of the CSRI’s strengths, its adaptability. Originally designed to cover about six A4 paper and taking about 20 minutes to complete, the CSRI undergoes careful scrutiny at the start of each study to ensure it is compatible in format, language, scope and content with the research aims, context, participants’ likely circumstances, and the quantity and precision of information required.

The CSRI is also adaptable in administration. Although originally designed to be administered to the service user or their carer face to face with a trained interviewer, the CSRI has been successfully administered via post for the service user to complete by themselves, and in a telephone interview. However, an interview is generally the preferred method to ensure as much relevant information as possible is obtained.

Examples of the CSRI may be found here.

The CSRI has been used in over 500 studies. An international CSRI and a children’s version have also been developed, using the original framework.

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