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Operational definitions for variable attribute levels in the DCE. Table presenting definitions used for attribute levels in the DCE. (DOCX 13Â kb)

DCE pilot testing protocol. Interview schedule for cognitive interviewing and pilot testing of DCE. (DOCX 18Â kb)

On-line structured prioritisation exercise (SPE). Full survey used to collect data. (DOCX 42Â kb)

Stage 3 (Phase 1): Results of on-line survey (SPE). Table presenting results of SPE online survey. (DOCX 22Â kb)

Purpose Evidence surrounding utilities for health states, derived either directly from the application of preference-based valuation methods or indirectly from the application of preference-based quality of life instruments, is increasingly being utilised to inform the cost-effectiveness of child health interventions. Proxy (parent or health professional) assessments are common in this area. This study sought to investigate the degree of convergence in childhood utilities generated directly or indirectly within dyad child and proxy assessments. Methods A systematic literature review was conducted following PRISMA guidelines. A comprehensive literature search strategy conducted across six search engines (PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, PsychoINFO, EconLit, CINAHL and Cochrane Library). Original peer-reviewed articles that reported utilities derived directly or indirectly using simultaneous dyad child and proxy assessments were extracted. Mean and median utilities, correlation coefficients and levels of agreement were extracted, catalogued and assessed. Results A total of 35 studies that reported utilities for two or more respondent types were identified. Of these, 29 studies reported dyad childhood self-report and proxy utilities whilst six studies reported levels of agreement and/or correlations only without documenting overall utilities. Proxy assessment was most often conducted by parents with the HUI3 representing the most commonly applied instrument across a range of health conditions. The utilities derived from child and parent proxy assessment were bidirectional with parental proxies tending to underestimate and health professional proxies tending to overestimate relative to child self-reports. Inter-rater agreement between child self-reports and parent-proxy reports were poorer for more subjective attributes (cognition, emotion and pain), relative to physical attributes (mobility, self-care, speech, vision) of health-related quality of life. Conclusions Childhood utilities derived from children or proxies are not interchangeable. The choice of self or proxy assessor may have potentially significant implications for economic evaluations of child health interventions.

Contains fulltext : 188598.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) Objectives: To improve information for patients and to facilitate a vaccination coverage that is in line with the EU and World Health Organization goals, we aimed to quantify how vaccination and patient characteristics impact on influenza vaccination uptake of elderly people. Methods: An online discrete choice experiment (DCE) was conducted among 1261 representatives of the Dutch general population aged 60 years or older. In the DCE, we used influenza vaccination scenarios based on five vaccination characteristics: effectiveness, risk of severe side effects, risk of mild side effects, protection duration, and absorption time. A heteroscedastic multinomial logit model was used, taking scale and preference heterogeneity (based on 19 patient characteristics) into account. Results: Vaccination and patient characteristics both contributed to explain influenza vaccination uptake. Assuming a base case respondent and a realistic vaccination scenario, the predicted uptake was 58%. One-way changes in vaccination characteristics and patient characteristics changed this uptake from 46% up to 61% and from 37% up to 95%, respectively. The strongest impact on vaccination uptake was whether the patient had been vaccinated last year, whether s/he had experienced vaccination side effects, and the patient’s general attitude towards vaccination. Conclusions: Although vaccination characteristics proved to influence influenza vaccination uptake, certain patient characteristics had an even higher impact on influenza vaccination uptake. Policy makers and general practitioners can use these insights to improve their communication plans and information regarding influenza vaccination for individuals aged 60 years or older. For instance, physicians should focus more on patients who had experienced side effects due to vaccination in the past, and policy makers should tailor the standard information folder to patients who had been vaccinated last year and to patient who had not. 10 p.

Health care policy makers internationally are increasingly expressing commitment to consultation with, and incorporation of, the views of the general public into the formulation of health policy and the process of setting health care priorities. In practice, however, there are relatively few opportunities for the general public to be involved in health care decision-making. In making resource allocation decisions, funders, tasked with managing scarce health care resources, are often faced with difficult decisions in balancing efficiency with equity considerations. A mixed methods (qualitative and quantitative) approach incorporating focus group discussions and a ranking exercise was utilised to develop a comprehensive list of potential criteria for setting priorities in health care formulated from the perspective of members of the general public in Australia. A strong level of congruence was found in terms of the rankings of the key criteria with the size of the health gain, clinical effectiveness, and the ability to provide quality of life improvements identified consistently as the three most important criteria for prioritising the funding of an intervention. Findings from this study will be incorporated into a novel DCE framework to explore how decision makers and members of the general public prioritize and trade off different types of health gain and to quantify the weights attached to specific efficiency and equity criteria in the priority setting process. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Objectives: This exploratory study sought to investigate the effect of cognitive functioning on the consistency of individual responses to a discrete choice experiment (DCE) study conducted exclusively with older people. Methods: A DCE to investigate preferences for multidisciplinary rehabilitation was administered to a consenting sample of older patients (aged 65 years and older) after surgery to repair a fractured hip (N = 84). Conditional logit, mixed logit, heteroscedastic conditional logit, and generalized multinomial logit regression models were used to analyze the DCE data and to explore the relationship between the level of cognitive functioning (specifically the absence or presence of mild cognitive impairment as assessed by the Mini-Mental State Examination) and preference and scale heterogeneity. Results: Both the heteroscedastic conditional logit and generalized multinomial logit models indicated that the presence of mild cognitive impairment did not have a significant effect on the consistency of responses to the DCE. Conclusions: This study provides important preliminary evidence relating to the effect of mild cognitive impairment on DCE responses for older people. It is important that further research be conducted in larger samples and more diverse populations to further substantiate the findings from this exploratory study and to assess the practicality and validity of the DCE approach with populations of older people. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

External validity is a crucial but under-researched topic when considering using discrete choice experiment (DCE) results to inform decision making in clinical, commercial or policy contexts. We present the theory and tests traditionally used to explore external validity that focus on a comparison of final outcomes and review how this traditional definition has been empirically tested in health economics and other sectors (such as transport, environment and marketing) in which DCE methods are applied. While an important component, we argue that the investigation of external validity should be much broader than a comparison of final outcomes. In doing so, we introduce a new and more comprehensive conceptualisation of external validity, closely linked to process validity, that moves us from the simple characterisation of a model as being or not being externally valid on the basis of predictive performance, to the concept that external validity should be an objective pursued from the initial conceptualisation and design of any DCE. We discuss how such a broader definition of external validity can be fruitfully used and suggest innovative ways in which it can be explored in practice. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Results: Thirty-nine studies applying 40 elicitation methods reported in 41 papers met the inclusion criteria. The discrete choice experiment method was most commonly applied (n = 18, 45.0 %), but other approaches, including contingent valuation and the person trade-off, were also used. Studies prioritised health systems (n = 4, 10.2 %), policies/programmes/services/interventions (n = 16, 41.0 %), or patient groups (n = 19, 48.7 %). Studies generally confirmed the importance of a wide range of process, non-health and patient-related characteristics in priority setting in selected contexts, alongside health outcomes. However, inconsistencies were observed for the relative importance of some prioritisation criteria, suggesting context and/or elicitation approach matter.Conclusions: Overall, findings suggest caution in directly incorporating public preferences as weights for priority setting unless the methods used to elicit the weights can be shown to be appropriate and robust in the priority-setting context.Background: There is current interest in incorporating weights based on public preferences for health and healthcare into priority-setting decisions.Objective: The aim of this systematic review was to explore the extent to which public preferences and trade-offs for priority-setting criteria have been quantified, and to describe the study contexts and preference elicitation methods employed.Methods: A systematic review was performed in April 2013 to identify empirical studies eliciting the stated preferences of the public for the provision of healthcare in a priority-setting context. Studies are described in terms of (i) the stated preference approaches used, (ii) the priority-setting levels and contexts, and (iii) the criteria identified as important and their relative importance. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

© 2016, Springer International Publishing Switzerland. Background: Discrete choice experiments with duration (DCETTO) can be used to estimate utility values for preference-based measures, such as the EQ-5D-5L. For self-completion, the health dimensions are presented in a standard order. However, for valuation, this may result in order effects. Thus, it is important to understand whether health state dimension ordering affects values. The aim of this study was to examine the importance of dimension ordering on DCE values using EQ-5D-5L. Methods: A choice experiment presenting two health profiles and a third immediate death option was developed. A three-arm study was used, with the same 120 choice sets presented online across each arm (n = 360 per arm). Arm 1 presented the standard EQ-5D-5L dimension order, arm 2 randomised order between respondents, and arm 3 randomised within respondents. Conditional logit regression was used to assess model consistency, and scale parameter testing was used to assess model poolability. Results: There were minor inconsistencies across each arm, but the magnitudes of the coefficients produced were generally consistent. Arm 3 produced the largest range of utility values (1 to −0.980). Scale parameter testing suggested that the models did not differ, and the data could be pooled. Follow-up questions did not suggest variation in terms of difficulty. Conclusions: The results suggest that the level of randomisation used in DCE health state valuation studies does not significantly impact values, and dimension order may not be as important as other study design issues. The results support past valuation studies that use the standard order of dimensions.

A key objective of discrete choice experiments is to obtain sufficient quantity of high quality choice data to estimate choice models to be used to explore various policy/clinically relevant issues. This paper focuses on a relatively new form of choice experiment, ‘Best Worst Discrete Choice Experiments’ (BWDCEs) and their relevance to health research as a new way to meet such an objective. We explain what BWDCEs are, how and when to apply them and we present several analytical approaches to model the resulting data. We demonstrate this preference elicitation approach in an empirical application exploring preferences of 898 members of the general public in Edmonton and Calgary, Canada for treatment of cardiac arrest occurring in a public place and show the gains achieved compared to traditional analysis of first best data. We suggest that BWDCEs are a valuable way to investigate preferences in the health sector and discuss implications for task design, analysis and areas for future research. Refereed/Peer-reviewed