L’effetto dell’esperienza della malattia sulla valutazione degli stati di salute

The issue of how respondents’ characteristics influence preference-based valuations of health states has been addressed by the literature with a particular emphasis on the analysis of the effects of experience of illness. This study investigates the impact of experience of illness and of current health state on valuations provided by patients through three techniques, Standard Gamble, Rating Scale, and Time Trade-Off. This analysis complements the existing literature on the duration of illness and on adaptive behaviour, and sheds light on the way experience may affect health valuation according to the technique adopted. We use responses from 130 interviews administered to consecutively admitted patients of two cardiology units. Results show that the impact of the time elapsed since diagnosis is technique-specific: only in Standard Gamble estimates we find evidence that, the further away in time is the diagnosis, the lower the utility of the state.