An Empirical Study of Two Alternative Comparators for Use in Time Trade-Off Studies

A paper by OHE’s Koonal Shah on alternative comparators for use in TTO studies is the first to be published as part of the new EuroQol Working Paper Series.

A paper by OHE’s Koonal Shah has become the first to be published as part of the EuroQol Research Foundation’s new Working Paper Series. The paper reports the methods and findings of an empirical health state valuation study carried out in collaboration between OHE and Brendan Mulhern of the University of Technology Sydney, Louise Longworth of Brunel University London, and Bas Janssen of the EuroQol Office.

Studies to produce value sets for preference-based measures of health require an upper anchor to be defined if the values are to be used to calculate quality-adjusted life years. Two different upper anchors have been used in time trade-off (TTO) studies to elicit values for the EQ-5D-5L instrument: ‘full health’ and EQ-5D-5L health state 11111 (which describes ‘no problems’ on each of the five dimensions of health). The study by Shah and colleagues assessed differences in TTO valuations using these two alternative comparator health states. 

Stated preference data were collected from 443 members of the general public in Sheffield via computer-assisted personal interviews. Respondents were randomly allocated to one of two arms, each using a different comparator health state. Based on the study results, the authors conclude that EQ-5D-5L values elicited using TTO are not greatly affected by whether full health or 11111 is used as the comparator health state.

Reference: Shah, K., Mulhern, B., Longworth, L. and Janssen, M.F., 2015. An empirical study of two alternative comparators for use in time-trade off studies. EuroQol Working Paper 15001. Rotterdam: EuroQol Research Foundation.

Download the full report here. 

OHE has been involved in a number of recently published journal articles which report the findings of EuroQol-related research. These include:

• a paper in the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology investigating the comparability of different language versions of the EQ-5D-5L response labels in Singapore, authored by Nan Luo (National University of Singapore), OHE’s Mike Herdman and colleagues;   
• a paper in Quality of life Research [open access] which assesses the performance of the EQ-VAS in the NHS, authored by OHE’s Yan Feng  and Nancy Devlin with colleague David Parkin;
• a paper in Medical Care [open access] which reports a study investigating the feasibility of using discrete choice experiments to value EQ-5D-5L health states.

For more information on OHE’s research on the measurement and valuation of health, please contact Nancy Devlin.