Exploring health preference heterogeneity in the UK: Using the online elicitation of personal utility functions approach to construct EQ‐5D‐5L value functions on societal, group and individual level

A new method has recently been developed for valuing health states, called ‘Online elicitation of Personal Utility Functions’ (OPUF). In contrast to established methods, such as time trade‐off or discrete choice experiments, OPUF does not require hundreds of respondents, but allows estimating utility functions for small groups and even at the individual level. In this study, we used OPUF to elicit EQ‐5D‐5L health state preferences from a (not representative) sample of the UK general population, and then compared utility functions on the societal‐, group‐, and individual level. A demo version of the survey is available at: https://eq5d5l.me. Data from 874 respondents were included in the analysis. For each respondent, we constructed a personal EQ‐5D‐5L value set. These personal value sets predicted respondents' choices in three hold‐out discrete choice tasks with an accuracy of 78%. Overall, preferences varied greatly between individuals. However, PERMANOVA analysis showed that demographic characteristics explained only a small proportion of the variability between subgroups. While OPUF is still under development, it has important strengths: it can be used to construct value sets for patient reported outcome instruments such as EQ‐5D‐5L, while also allowing examination of underlying preferences in an unprecedented level of detail. In the future, OPUF could be used to complement existing methods, allowing valuation studies in smaller samples, and providing more detailed insights into the heterogeneity of preferences across subgroups.