EconEndLife Task 3b: valuing care
Research type
Research Study
Full title
EconEndLife programme (Task 3b): To explore the feasibility of obtaining values, and the values elicited, from people at the end of life for a patient measure of end of life care
IRAS ID
158293
Contact name
Joanna Coast
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University Of Birmingham
Research summary
The ICECAP Supportive Care Measure (ICECAP-SCM) is a self-complete questionnaire developed to evaluate the benefits of end-of-life care and to provide researchers with a stronger outcome measure for use in economic evaluation of interventions at the end of life. It has been generated from in-depth interviews (so that it measures what is important to people). So far, values from the general population have been obtained for the ICECAP-SCM but not values from people at the end of life. This element of the work will determine the feasibility of obtaining valuations from individuals at the end of life and will make some preliminary assessments as to whether there are differences in values between this group and people in the general population. The valuation technique used is called best-worst scaling (BWS). With this method people are asked to say what is the best thing about a particular scenario and what is the worst. From this information, it is possible to work out how different people value particular states by looking at the probability that they choose different options. In this work, participants will be asked to answer just 8 questions; the design of the questionnaire has been developed through the earlier work within the EconEndLife programme, so that the data collected will be directly comparable with the larger exercise undertaken by the general population but so that only a relatively small number of questions have to be asked. Participants (patients attending the hospice) will recruited through St Mary's Hospice, Birmingham. Participants who meet the inclusion criteria and consent to participate will be asked to verbalise their thoughts whilst completing the questionnaire and these thoughts will be recorded and transcribed. This will provide a qualitative element of understanding that will support the BWS data.
REC name
Wales REC 5
REC reference
14/WA/1144
Date of REC Opinion
21 Oct 2014
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion