Data collection completed: Steering Group has signed off on the data quality

We are pleased to announce that data collection for the new UK EQ-5D-5L valuation study was completed on September 18, 2023. For this study, 1200 subjects were recruited in the UK, who were interviewed by videoconference or face-to-face. On November 14, 2023 a Steering Group meeting took place where reports on the complete data set were reviewed extensively. The Steering Group concluded that the data quality is acceptable for modelling the EQ-5D-5L value set for the UK. The Steering Group congratulated Professor Donna Rowen and the study team with achieving this milestone.

Data collection was in accordance with the published study protocol. During the study, data collection was paused three times for scheduled interim analyses and Steering Group meetings. These took place at 20%, 40% and 60% of the data collection, as specified in the Study Governance document. At these interim analysis meetings the Steering Group discussed interviewer performance, data quality and representativeness of the participants (according to age, sex, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and proportional representation across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland). At all timepoints these were considered to be acceptable, so no changes were made to the study protocol.

The Steering Group met on November 14, 2023 to consider reports on the complete data set from the independent Quality Control Team, the EQ-VT Support team and the study team. The Steering Group reviewed and discussed detailed reports on interviewer compliance with the study protocol, sample characteristics and sample representativeness. Assessments of the preference data, elicited using the time trade-off technique, included the distribution of time trade-off responses, logical inconsistencies where a better health state is valued worse, proportions of the time trade-off responses at certain easy-to-achieve values, participant understanding and engagement, amongst others (please see the study protocol for further details).

The Steering Group unanimously concluded that the complete dataset was of acceptable quality and addressed the concerns raised during the quality assurance of the Devlin et al. (2017) value set for England (see the quality assurance report by Hernandez Alava et al. here and the rebuttal by van Hout et al. here). Therefore, the Steering Group signed off on the final dataset. The study team will now focus on modelling the study data, in order to estimate the UK EQ-5D-5L value set.