OBJECTIVES: There is a need to standardize the collection of health economic measures in clinical trials evaluating non-pharmacologic interventions for dementia patients. We developed the Dementia Behavioral Intervention Cost and Outcomes Planner (DBI-COP), a tool to guide investigators in collecting health economic data when evaluating dementia behavioral interventions. METHODS: DBI-COP was developed based on the review of the study protocols of four dementia behavioral intervention trials that included an economic evaluation: 1) Customized Activity Program (CAP); 2) Maximizing Independence (MIND) at Home; 3) Care of Persons with Dementia in their Environments (COPE); and 4) Adult Day Plus. For each protocol, study type, perspective, cost and outcome measures were catalogued in an Excel database and incorporated into DBI-COP. Each measure was analyzed for frequency of use among studies and summarized in a table. They were then classified into the following groups: direct costs, indirect costs and effectiveness measures. RESULTS: DBI-COP, as a comprehensive list of measures, includes human and nonhuman aspects of intervention costs, social services cost, cost of caregiver involvement and utility measures. The cost measures consistently present across the four studies comprise both direct and indirect costs and include the cost of staff training, intervention delivery, and staff work outside of intervention delivery. In respect to healthcare service utilization, the cost of inpatient and outpatient services, emergency department visits and nursing home admissions were evaluated in all four studies. However, communication between team members and the costs of caregiver time and travel was only evaluated in one study. CONCLUSIONS: The DBI-COP tool can guide health economic analyses of non-pharmacologic interventions for dementia and could potentially also be applied to pharmacologic interventions. Utilizing the standardized set of measures identified in DBI-COP will lead to consistency in the conduct of economic analyses for dementia and will help foster evidence-based decision-making.