Valuing EQ-5D-5L health states ‘in context’ using a discrete choice experiment

摘要

Background In health state valuation studies, health states are typically presented as a series of sentences, each describing a health dimension and severity ‘level’. Differences in the severity levels can be subtle, and confusion about which is ‘worse’ can lead to logically inconsistent valuation data. A solution could be to mimic the way patients self-report health, where the ordinal structure of levels is clear. We develop and test the feasibility of presenting EQ-5D-5L health states in the ‘context’ of the entire EQ-5D-5L descriptive system. Methods An online two-arm discrete choice experiment was conducted in the UK ( n ?=?993). Respondents were randomly allocated to a control (standard presentation) or ‘context’ arm. Each respondent completed 16 paired comparison tasks and feedback questions about the tasks. Differences across arms were assessed using regression analyses. Results Presenting health states ‘in context’ can significantly reduce the selection of logically dominated health states, particularly for labels ‘severe’ and ‘extreme’ (χ_(2)?=?46.02, p ?