Exploring the relationship between two health state classification systems and happiness using a large patient data set

The economic evaluation of health care technologies employs a standard economic approach based on preferences to provide utility information. This paper investigates an alternative approach that uses happiness to weight the health states of two preference-based measures (EQ-5D and SF-6D) in a follow-up of a large hospital patient sample (N=15,184). Logit models relating the health state classifications of these two measures to happiness suggests a different weighting across dimensions to that from preference elicitation techniques such as time trade-off. While mental health (depression and anxiety), vitality and social functioning were found to have a large significant association to a patient’s own happiness assessment, pain was less so and physical health had none. The implications of these results for health policy are discussed.