The precision of health state valuation by members of the general public using the standard gamble

Abstract

The precision of estimates of treatment effects based on preference data obtained from disease-specific measurements in clinically significant studies of health technologies was acceptable using an internet-based panel of members of the general public and the standard gamble. Definition of the minimally important difference in utility estimates is required to adequately assess precision and should be the subject of further research.

Comparison of the quality of life between patients with non-small-cell lung cancer and healthy controls

“…Utility assessment is an attractive health-related QOL measure because it can produce a single overall value on a scale with the endpoints of ''death'' and ''optimal health''. Such a scale is appropriate to statistically weight survival times for the calculation of quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs), which can be applied for decision analyses and costeffectiveness analyses [13,14]. No full correlation between psychometric health profile measures and health outcome utility measures exists [15].…”

“…The SG method is based on the fundamental axioms of the von Neumman and Morganstern utility theory [13]. By definition, preferences measured in any way other than with the SG method cannot be utilities [13,14].…”

The disutility of tooth loss: A comparison of patient and professional values

“…Various methodologies have been used to elicit health state utility values. These include scales , time trade‐offs , and standard gambles . In this study, a scaling approach using a visual analog scale (VAS) was used.…”

Can the general public use vignettes to discriminate between Alzheimer’s disease health states?

“…non-small cell lung cancer [ 26 ], rheumatoid arthritis [ 27 ]) after being presented with vignettes to describe the health states. In another study [ 28 ], the researchers used data from randomized controlled trials to develop ‘before-after’ vignettes for each of five health conditions (i.e., depression, osteoarthritis, insomnia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, Crohn’s disease). The ‘before’ vignettes described the symptoms for each condition prior to treatment; the ‘after’ vignettes described a less severe set of symptoms for each condition following treatment.…”