A Note on the Relationship Between Age and Health-related Quality of Life Assessment

A new OHE-authored paper on the relationship between age and health-related quality of life has been published in Quality of Life Research.

A new article entitled A note on the relationship between age and health-related quality of life assessment was recently published in Quality of Life Research. The article was written by OHE’s Patricia Cubi-Molla, Koonal Shah, Nancy Devlin, and Mike Herdman, in collaboration with Jamie Garside.

The article explores whether and how the age of respondents is related to their time trade-off (TTO) valuations of hypothetical EQ-5D-3L health states, and contributes to the existing debate about the rationale and implications for using age-specific utilities in health technology assessment.

An earlier version of this paper was published as an OHE Research Paper and discussed in a blog post. Preliminary findings and discussion points were also presented in an OHE Lunchtime Seminar. Previously published/presented versions explored TTO and visual analogue scale (VAS) valuations, as well as differences in self-reported health-related quality of life.

By comparison, our new journal article focuses mainly on the TTO valuations of hypothetical health states. The methodology was revised following comments from peer reviewers, and although the main results do not differ much compared to those reported in preliminary versions, they are now more robust. We also introduce a comparison between the differences in TTO values (i.e. differences between values obtained from the oldest respondents and those obtained from younger age groups) and estimates of minimum clinically important differences, in order to assess how relevant these differences are.

The paper has been published as a brief communication, with open access to facilitate dissemination. Supplementary material is also available for those who are interested in having access to additional background material.

For more information, contact Patricia Cubi-Molla.

Citation

Cubi-Molla, P., Shah, K., Garside, J., Herdman, M. and Devlin, N., 2018. A note on the relationship between age and health-related quality of life assessment. Quality of Life Research. DOI.

Related research

Cubi-Molla, P., Shah, K.K., Garside, J., Herdman, M. and Devlin, N., 2017. Age and Utilities: Issues for HTA. OHE Research Paper. RePEc.

Cubi-Molla, P., Shah, K. and Burström, K., 2018. Experience-Based Values: A Framework for Classifying Different Types of Experience in Health Valuation Research. The Patient, 11(3), pp.253–270. DOI. RePEc.