Moolla, A. orcid.org/0000-0002-9768-5389, Schneider, P., Marten, O. et al. (2 more authors) (2025) Test-retest reliability of the Online Elicitation of Personal Utility Functions (OPUF) approach for valuing the EQ-HWB-S. The European Journal of Health Economics. ISSN 1618-7598
Abstract
Introduction
The EQ Health and Wellbeing Short (EQ-HWB-S) is a new 9-item instrument designed to generate utility values. However, its length makes traditional preference elicitation challenging. The Online elicitation of Personal Utility Functions (OPUF) approach has been tested as a potential solution. This study aimed to assess the test-retest reliability of OPUF for valuing the EQ-HWB-S.
Methods
The OPUF survey was administered twice, two weeks apart, to 220 German participants, including 73 from the general population and 147 patients with diabetes or rheumatic disease. Test-retest reliability was evaluated at individual and aggregate levels, examining dimension rankings, swing weights, level weights, and anchoring factors. Continuous data were analysed using the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), and ranking data were compared using Spearman’s correlation coefficient. Individual and aggregate level utility decrements were assessed using ICC and t-tests.
Results
Approximately 36% of participants had significantly correlated dimension ranks, with 42% selecting the same top-ranked dimension. Poor agreement was shown in 70% of ICC values for individual dimension swing weights. For intermediate level weights, ICC values showed poor agreement in 70% and moderate agreement in 30% of responses. The kappa for individual pairwise comparison tasks was 0.64 (95% CI: 0.54–0.75) showing moderate agreement; however, the ICC for individual-level anchoring factors was 0.12 (p < 0.05), indicating poor agreement. Aggregate utility decrements across dimensions were similar.
Conclusion
The OPUF approach generates reliable aggregate value sets for the EQ-HWB-S, but further exploration is needed to understand and address the reasons behind inconsistencies at the individual level.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Authors/Creators: |
|
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2025. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Keywords: | EQ-HWB; Health valuation; Multi-attribute value theory; Multi-criteria decision analysis; Personal utility function; Preference elicitation |
Dates: |
|
Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health (Sheffield) > School of Medicine and Population Health The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health (Sheffield) > School of Health and Related Research (Sheffield) > ScHARR - Sheffield Centre for Health and Related Research |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 11 Mar 2025 10:21 |
Last Modified: | 11 Mar 2025 10:21 |
Status: | Published online |
Publisher: | Springer Science and Business Media LLC |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/s10198-025-01769-4 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:224314 |