| Summary: | <p><strong>Background:</strong> There has been some debate about the choice of perspective and the age of the child considered when completing preference elicitation tasks in the EQ-5D-Y-3L valuation protocol. This study aimed to clarify the impact on latent scale EQ-5D-Y-3L values of varying the age of the child experiencing the health state considered by respondents completing the discrete choice experiment (DCE) tasks of the protocol.</p>
<p><strong>Methods:</strong> We conducted an online DCE with a representative sample of 1,000 adults in the UK and 1,000 adults in the USA. Respondents selected the health state they prefer from a series of DCE paired EQ-5D-Y-3L health state comparisons using their own perspective and that of a hypothetical child from the following age groups: “5-7 years-old”, “8-10 years-old”, “11-13 years-old” and “14-15 years-old”. Data analysis was conducted using separate multinomial logit models for each perspective and country. We also estimated combined models including data from each possible pair of perspectives and used interactions between EQ-5D-Y-3L levels and perspective to determine whether any differences were statistically significant.</p>
<p><strong>Results:</strong> No statistically significant differences in coefficients between perspectives were found in the US. In the UK there were differences between the own perspective and the 5-7 years-old perspective (looking after myself level 3), as well as between the 5-7 years-old perspective and the 8-10 years-old perspective (usual activities level 3).</p>
<p><strong>Conclusions:</strong> Our results suggest that there is minimal impact on latent scale values when using different ages of the hypothetical child in the current EQ-5D-Y-3L valuation protocol.</p>
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