Abstract
BackgroundA common approach to obtain health state valuations is the time-tradeoff (TTO) method. Much remains unknown regarding the influence of responder characteristics on TTO answers. The objective of this study is to increase understanding of the influence that beliefs regarding future health and death, as well as desires to witness certain life events, have on respondents’ health state valuations.MethodsAn online survey was designed, including three TTO questions using a 10 year timeframe. Moreover, respondents completed demographic questions, the Health-Risk Attitude Scale (HRAS), the Expectations Regarding Aging (ERA) questionnaire, questions about beliefs regarding future health (i.e. life expectancy) and death (i.e. fear of death, belief in life after death and opinion about euthanasia), and about important life events taking place within the TTO timeframe. Regression analyses were performed in order to assess the influence of these different variables.ResultsOne thousand sixty-seven respondents were included in the analyses. The following variables were significantly associated with years traded off: ERA mental health (decrease), ERA physical health (increase), HRAS (increase), support for euthanasia (increase), fear of death (decrease) and consideration of an important life event (decrease). The explained variance of the final model was low (0.08).ConclusionTTO responses may be influenced by considerations of future health, including life events and attitudes regarding health risks and death. Further investigation of TTO responses remains warranted.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12955-015-0402-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
A common approach to obtain health state valuations is the time-tradeoff (TTO) method
Responder characteristics From the original 1223 respondents who completed the survey, 156 were excluded for speeding through the questionnaire, which left a total of 1067 respondents for the analyses
Five percent of the respondents were against euthanasia under all circumstances and 56 % of the respondents believed in life after death
Summary
A common approach to obtain health state valuations is the time-tradeoff (TTO) method. The objective of this study is to increase understanding of the influence that beliefs regarding future health and death, as well as desires to witness certain life events, have on respondents’ health state valuations. Some authorities prefer the use of quality adjusted life years (QALYs), as these are believed to allow for a universal comparison across diseases areas [1]. QALYs combine length and quality of life, with the latter normally expressed as a value between 0 (dead) and 1 (perfect health). Societal preferences obtained in the general public typically underlie these values [2, 3]. Different valuation techniques are used to obtain health state valuations from the general public. The most widely used approach is the time-trade off (TTO)
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