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Social relationships as a major determinant in the valuation of health states

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Abstract

Purpose

To empirically determine the impact of the capacity to sustain social relationships on valuing health states.

Methods

68 clinical experts conducted a health state valuation exercise in five sites using pairwise comparison, ranking, and person trade-off as elicitation methods. 23,840 pairwise comparisons of a total of 379 health states were analyzed by conditional logistic regression.

Results

Social relationships had a clear monotonic association with perceived disability: the more limited the capacity to sustain social relationships, the more disabling the resulting health state valuations. The highest level of limitations with respect to social relationships was associated with slightly lower impact on health state valuations compared to the highest level of limitations in physical functioning.

Conclusions

Social relationships showed an independent contribution to health state valuations and should be included in health state measures.

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Abbreviations

CLAMES:

Classification and Measurement System of Functional Health

CLR:

Conditional logistic regression

U.S.:

United States

WHO:

World Health Organization

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Acknowledgments

This article was funded by National Institute for Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism; contract no. HHSN267200700041C.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Healthcare Management, Carinthia University of the Applied Sciences, Hauptplatz 12, 9560, Feldkirchen, Austria

    Ulrich Frick

  2. Psychiatric University Hospital, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany

    Ulrich Frick

  3. Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Hyacinth Irving & Jürgen Rehm

  4. Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Jürgen Rehm

  5. Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany

    Jürgen Rehm

Authors
  1. Ulrich Frick
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  2. Hyacinth Irving
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  3. Jürgen Rehm
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Correspondence to Ulrich Frick.

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Frick, U., Irving, H. & Rehm, J. Social relationships as a major determinant in the valuation of health states. Qual Life Res 21, 209–213 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11136-011-9945-0

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