Comparison of Time-tradeoff Utilities and Rating Scale Values of Cancer Patients and Their Relatives

Abstract

Because they are easy to administer, rating scales are often used as proxies for utility measures. The authors investigated the relationship between time-tradeoff utilities and rating scale values in two populations: 124 cancer patients asked to evaluate their current states of health and 102 relatives and close friends of cancer patients asked to evaluate health- state scenarios. None of the models tested effectively described the relationship between individual patients' rating scale values and time-tradeoff utilities for their current states of health. In contrast, both a plateau and a power-function model explained the variability in the responses of the relatives reasonably well (R² = 0.56 and R² = 0.58, respectively). Given that many respondents who were unwilling to trade off any time assigned rating scale values of well below 100, a plateau model may represent the best approach to adjusting rating scale values for health-state scenarios when it is not feasible to elicit time-tradeoff utilities. Key words: time tradeoff; utility; rating scale; cancer; patient preferences; quality of life. (Med Decis Making 1995;15:132-137)