On the third Thursday of every month, we speak to a recent graduate about their thesis and their studies. This month’s guest is Dr Lidia Engel who graduated with a PhD from Simon Fraser University. If you would like to suggest a candidate for an upcoming Thesis Thursday, get in touch.
Title
Going beyond health-related quality of life for outcome measurement in economic evaluation
Supervisors
David Whitehurst, Scott Lear, Stirling Bryan
Repository link
https://theses.lib.sfu.ca/thesis/etd10264
Your thesis explores the potential for expanding the ‘evaluative space’ in economic evaluation. Why is this important?
I think there are two answers to this question. Firstly, methods for economic evaluation of health care interventions have existed for a number of years but these evaluations have mainly been applied to more narrowly defined ‘clinical’ interventions, such as drugs. Interventions nowadays are more complex, where benefits cannot be simply measured in terms of health. You can think of areas such as public health, mental health, social care, and end-of-life care, where interventions may result in broader benefits, such as increased control over daily life, independence, or aspects related to the process of health care delivery. Therefore, I believe there is a need to re-think the way we measure and value outcomes when we conduct an economic evaluation. Secondly, ignoring broader outcomes of health care interventions that go beyond the narrow focus of health-related quality of life can potentially lead to misallocation of scarce health care resources. Evidence has shown that the choice of outcome measure (such as a health outcome or a broader measure of wellbeing) can have a significant influence on the conclusions drawn from an economic evaluation.
You use both qualitative and quantitative approaches. Was this key to answering your research questions?
I mainly applied quantitative methods in my thesis research. However, Chapter 3 draws upon some qualitative methodology. To gain a better understanding of ‘benefits beyond health’, I came across a novel approach, called Critical Interpretive Synthesis. It is similar to meta-ethnography (i.e. a synthesis of qualitative research), with the difference that the synthesis is not of qualitative literature but of methodologically diverse literature. It involves an iterative approach, where searching, sampling, and synthesis go hand in hand. It doesn’t only produce a summary of existing literature but enables the development of new interpretations that go beyond those originally offered in the literature. I really liked this approach because it enabled me to synthesise the evidence in a more effective way compared with a conventional systematic review. Defining and applying codes and themes, as it is traditionally done in qualitative research, allowed me to organize the general idea of non-health benefits into a coherent thematic framework, which in the end provided me with a better understanding of the topic overall.
What data did you analyse and what quantitative methods did you use?
I conducted three empirical analyses in my thesis research, which all made use of data from the ICECAP measures (ICECAP-O and ICECAP-A). In my first paper, I used data from the ‘Walk the Talk (WTT)‘ project to investigate the complementarity of the ICECAP-O and the EQ-5D-5L in a public health context using regression analyses. My second paper used exploratory factor analysis to investigate the extent of overlap between the ICECAP-A and five preference-based health-related quality of life measures, using data from the Multi Instrument Comparison (MIC) project. I am currently finalizing submission of my third empirical analysis, which reports findings from a path analysis using cross-sectional data from a web-based survey. The path analysis explores three outcome measurement approaches (health-related quality of life, subjective wellbeing, and capability wellbeing) through direct and mediated pathways in individuals living with spinal cord injury. Each of the three studies addressed different components of the overall research question, which, collectively, demonstrated the added value of broader outcome measures in economic evaluation when compared with existing preference-based health-related quality of life measures.
Thinking about the different measures that you considered in your analyses, were any of your findings surprising or unexpected?
In my first paper, I found that the ICECAP-O is more sensitive to environmental features (i.e. social cohesion and street connectivity) when compared with the EQ-5D-5L. As my second paper has shown, this was not surprising, as the ICECAP-A (a measure for adults rather than older adults) and the EQ-5D-5L measure different constructs and had only limited overlap in their descriptive classification systems. While a similar observation was made when comparing the ICECAP-A with three other preference-based health-related quality of life measures (15D, HUI-3, and SF-6D), a substantial overlap was observed between the ICECAP-A and the AQoL-8D, which suggests that it is possible for broader benefits to be captured by preference-based health-related measures (although some may not consider the AQoL-8D to be exclusively ‘health-related’, despite the label). The findings from the path analysis confirmed the similarities between the ICECAP-A and the AQoL-8D. However, the findings do not imply that the AQoL-8D and ICECAP-A are interchangeable instruments, as a mediation effect was found that requires further research.
How would you like to see your research inform current practice in economic evaluation? Is the QALY still in good health?
I am aware of the limitations of the QALY and although there are increasing concerns that the QALY framework does not capture all benefits of health care interventions, it is important to understand that the evaluative space of the QALY is determined by the dimensions included in preference-based measures. From a theoretical point of view, the QALY can embrace any characteristics that are important for the allocation of health care resources. However, in practice, it seems that QALYs are currently defined by what is measured (e.g. the dimensions and response options of EQ-5D instruments) rather than the conceptual origin. Therefore, although non-health benefits have been largely ignored when estimating QALYs, one should not dismiss the QALY framework but rather develop appropriate instruments that capture such broader benefits. I believe the findings of my thesis have particular relevance for national HTA bodies that set guidelines for the conduct of economic evaluation. While the need to maintain methodological consistency is important, the assessment of the real benefits of some health care interventions would be more accurate if we were less prescriptive in terms of which outcome measure to use when conducting an economic evaluation. As my thesis has shown, some preference-based measures already adopt a broad evaluative space but are less frequently used.
