The validity of using health state indexes in measuring the consequences of traffic injury for public health

Rune Elvik

Social Science & Medicine, 1995, vol. 40, issue 10, 1385-1398

Abstract: This paper describes an assessment of the validity of using health state indexes as a means of describing the consequences of traffic injury for public health. Three issues are discussed: (1) Can questionnaire data be used as input for estimating health state values by means of health state indexes? (2) Can the validity of describing the consequences of traffic injury by means of different health state indexes (QALY-indexes) be assessed? (3) Can estimated health state values be used directly as a basis for decision making? It is concluded that questionnaire data can be used as input for health state value estimation. Four health state indexes are compared: The Quality of Well Being Scale, The McMaster Health Classification System, The Rosser and Kind Index and The EuroQol Instrument (transformed version). It is concluded that an assessment of the validity of these indexes is possible, and that the EuroQol Instrument appears to be the most valid of the four indexes that are compared. None of the four indexes give values that are consistent with public policy objectives, but objectives were not set with the benefit of knowing the relative utility loss associated with injuries at different levels of severity.

Keywords: QALY; health; state; index; traffic; injury; validity; public; health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1995
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277-9536(94)00264-T
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:40:y:1995:i:10:p:1385-1398

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().