Valuing health states: A comparison of methods

In eliciting health state valuations, two widely used methods are the standard gamble (SG) and the time trade-off (TTO), Both methods make assumptions about individual preferences that are too restrictive to allow them to act as perfect proxies for utility, ?Therefore, a choice between them might instead be made on empirical grounds, This paper reports on a study which compared a ''props'' (using specially-designed boards) and a ''no props'' (using self-completion booklets) variant of each method. The results suggested that both no props variants might be susceptible to framing effects and that TTO props outperformed SG props.