Valuing EQ-5D using time trade-off in France

Abstract

Objectives: While a French language version of the EQ-5D exists, to date, there has been no French value set to accompany it. The objective of our study was then to derive the French TTO value set of the EQ-5D.

Methods: A total of 452 respondents aged over 18 were recruited who were representative of the French population with regard to age, gender, and socio-professional group. The direct valuation of 24 health states was first obtained by Time Trade-Off (TTO), and the negative TTO values were bounded using the monotonic transformation. Several alternative model specifications were investigated to estimate the values for all 243 states in the EQ-5D descriptive system. Only the best fitting model is presented in this paper. The analysis was conducted at an individual level to make the maximum use of the available data, and we estimated mixed models with random intercept. Models were compared through the Akaike information criterion (AIC), the mean absolute error (MAE), and the Pearson correlation coefficient between the observed and the predicted values of each model.

Results: After exclusion, 443 respondents took part in the study. The best fitting model included the same variables as the N3-model used in UK.

Conclusion: This study provides the French value set of the EQ-5D based on the stated preferences of the French general public facilitating cost-effectiveness analysis.