PROJECT 4

Improving preference elicitation methods to value paediatric Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQoL)

Overview: 
Project 4 builds on the work of Projects 1-3, and will explore methods to value health states within a paediatric health instrument. It will be informed by initial qualitative findings from Project 3, and the results of project 4 should help identify how we can ask health state valuation questions in a way that is clear and well understood to online survey respondents. This is important, as it will inform Project 5, which will develop a large online valuation survey for one of the key paediatric health instruments currently in use.
Research questions: 
•    What perspective should valuation methods adopt? 
•    How can valuation tasks be made accessible to children?
•    Does the choice of instrument affect how respondents value health states?

Methods: 
We will conduct a large multi-arm DCE study in both children (aged 12 and older) and adults. We will source sample through a population-representative panel. Both adult and child samples will be randomised on three questions. Each combination will be presented to 400 respondents from each population, giving a total sample of 400 respondents x 8 combinations of issues x 2 populations (adults and children); that is, n=6,400. 
Randomisation level 1: Valuation perspective - does it matter if people are asked to value their own health or the health of a hypothetical (or unknown) child?
Randomisation level 2: Making simpler choice sets - do people respond better if they are presented with simpler choice tasks where they only have to consider a smaller number of health domains, relative to a larger number?
Randomisation level 3: How do people value health differently when it is described using different instruments? The choice of two instruments for this will be determined in conjunction with our Decision Makers Panel.
We will explore both the responses given and differences in model estimates, as well as other key variables such as the time to complete the survey, whether respondents say the survey was too difficult, and whether respondents drop out at different rates from the different arms. 
The findings from Project 4 will then inform Project 5 by guiding how these tasks should be administered to ensure good uptake from across the population, and also which paediatric instrument we should use to describe health in the valuation stage.

Core Team: A/Professor Richard Norman, Professor Rosalie Viney, A/Professor Brendan Mulhern, Professor Deborah Street