An investigation into the empirical validity of the EQ‐5D and SF‐6D based on hypothetical preferences in a general population

Stavros Petrou and Christine Hockley

Health Economics, 2005, vol. 14, issue 11, 1169-1189

Abstract: Background: An important consideration for studies that derive utility scores using multi‐attribute utility measures is the psychometric integrity of the measurement instrument. Of particular importance is the requirement to establish the empirical validity of multi‐attribute utility measures; that is, whether they generate utility scores that, in practice, reflect people's preferences. We compared the empirical validity of EQ‐5D versus SF‐6D utility scores based on hypothetical preferences in a large, representative sample of the English population. Methods: Adult participants in the 1996 Health Survey for England (n=16 443) formed the basis of the investigation. The subjects were asked to complete the EQ‐5D and SF‐36 measures. Their responses were converted into utility scores using the York A1 tariff set and the SF‐6D utility algorithm, respectively. One‐way analysis of variance was used to test the hypothetically constructed preference rule that each set of utility scores differs significantly by self‐reported health status (categorised as very good, good, fair, bad or very bad). The degree to which EQ‐5D and SF‐6D utility scores reflect alternative configurations of self‐reported health status; illness, disability or infirmity, and medication use was tested using the relative efficiency statistic and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. Results: The mean utility score for the EQ‐5D was 0.845 (95% CI: 0.842, 0.849), whilst the mean utility score for the SF‐6D was 0.799 (95% CI: 0.797, 0.802), representing a mean difference in utility score of 0.046 (95% CI: 0.044, 0.049; p

Date: 2005
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/hec.1006

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:wly:hlthec:v:14:y:2005:i:11:p:1169-1189

Access Statistics for this article

Health Economics is currently edited by Alan Maynard, John Hutton and Andrew Jones

More articles in Health Economics from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().