A "new and improved" EQ-5D valuation questionnaire? Results from a pilot study.

Notwithstanding its widespread use, the standard questionnaire used to elicit visual analogue scale valuations for EQ-5D states is well known to suffer from problems with missing values (particularly for the state "dead") and logical inconsistencies. This contribution reports on efforts to redesign the questionnaire to overcome these problems and the results from its use in a pilot study. The redesigned questionnaire asks respondents to provide a numerical score for each state (instead of drawing lines to a visual analogue scale) and employs a new method for valuing "dead". A pilot study was undertaken to gauge the effects of these innovations, over and above other cosmetic changes to the questionnaire. The redesigned questionnaire was found to result in fewer missing values, fewer exclusions and fewer logical inconsistencies. Mean re-scaled values for the health states remained virtually identical. The results suggest that scoring is a better way of eliciting self-completed valuations than scaling.