Abstract

Background

The EuroQol 5-dimension (EQ-5D) is a standard instrument that is widely used for measuring health-related quality of life and quality-adjusted life years in economic evaluation of healthcare interventions.

Objective

To estimate a preference valuation set for EQ-5D 3-level (3L) health states from the perspective of the general population in the capital of Iran.

Methods

Eight hundred seventy adults aged ≥18 years were interviewed in Tehran (Iran's capital) from July to November 2013. The participants were selected by a stratified random sampling method and were interviewed face-to-face at their usual residence. Forty-two health states were selected and valued from the 243 states derived from the EQ-5D-3L instrument. Each respondent valued 11 health states using the time trade-off method. Generalized least squares regression with random effect was used to predict values for health states.

Results

The analysis was performed for 846 respondents. The final model yielded the best fit for the time trade-off value at the individual level with an overall R of 0.45 and a mean absolute error of 0.214. The mean values for the 42 health states ranged from 0.934 for state 11121 to -0.142 for state 33333.

Conclusions

This study provided for the first time a value set for calculating quality-adjusted life years from the EQ-5D instrument in Iran. The Iranian EQ-5D-3L value set slightly differs from the value sets of the UK and the United States.