Counterintuitive??? Preferences in Health-Related Quality-of-Life Measurement

Bibliographic Data

ID9101283
AuthorsJames W Bush (University of California San Diego, corresponding author), John P Anderson (University of California San Diego), Robert M Kaplan (0000-0003-0229-0200), Wallace R Blischke (University of Southern California)
Year1982
Volume20
Issue5
Pages516-525
Publication date1982-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueMedical Care (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0025-7079 • E-ISSN: 1537-1948
PublisherOvid Technologies (Wolters Kluwer Health) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1097/00005650-198205000-00008
PMID7098590
OpenAlexW2022472184
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited9

The published preferences for scale steps in a health-related quality-of-life scale have been noted to be contrary to some prior assumptions about their rank ordering. The differences noted are actually statistically nonsignificant, and the observed ordering has a clear intuitive explanation. Several alternative explanations, including vagueness in the case descriptions, inaccuracy in the scaling method, the presence of interactions in the subjects' cognitive integration rules and chance inversions in the presence of the flat response surface characteristic of linear models, are all shown to be impossible or unlikely contributors to the empirical results. The implications of the "negative preferences" for other measurement approaches are discussed, as well as the role of separate attribute coefficients in health policy analyses

Cognition · Cognitive psychology · Counterintuitive · Econometrics · Empirical research · Epistemology · Fuzzy logic · Ordinal Scale · Quality (philosophy) · Rank (graph theory) · Scale (ratio) · Scaling · Statistics · Vagueness · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics · Economic and Environmental Valuation · Health Systems, Economic Evaluations, Quality of Life · Mathematics · Psychology