Psychometric evaluation of the Health-Risk Attitude Scale (HRAS-13): assessing the reliability, dimensionality and validity in the general population and a patient population.

Objectives: The aim of this study was to assess the reliability, dimensionality and validity of the self-report questionnaire Health-Risk Attitude Scale (HRAS-13) in a sample of the general population and a patient population.

Methods: Sample 1 ( = 930) was recruited from the general population aged 18-65 years in the Netherlands. Sample 2 ( = 486) was recruited from the population of knee and hip osteoarthritis patients aged 45 and over, also from the Netherlands.

The construction of standard gamble utilities.

Health effects for cost-effectiveness analysis are best measured in life years, with quality of life in each life year expressed in terms of utilities. The standard gamble (SG) has been the gold standard for utility measurement. However, the biases of probability weighting, loss aversion, and scale compatibility have an inconclusive effect on SG utilities.

Exploring the reference point in prospect theory: gambles for length of life.

Attitude toward risk is an important factor determining patient preferences. Risk behavior has been shown to be strongly dependent on the perception of the outcome as either a gain or a loss. According to prospect theory, the reference point determines how an outcome is perceived.

Understanding VAS valuations: qualitative data on the cognitive process.

Eliciting people's value is a central pursuit in health economics. We explored approaches to valuing a health state on a visual analog scale (VAS). Additionally, we examined whether dual processing (an interaction between automatic and controlled information processing) occurred during VAS valuation.

Correcting biases in standard gamble and time tradeoff utilities.

The standard gamble (SG) method and the time tradeoff (TTO) method are commonly used to measure utilities. However, they are distorted by biases due to loss aversion, scale compatibility, utility curvature for life duration, and probability weighting. This article applies corrections for these biases and provides new data on these biases and their corrections.