EuroQol: health-related quality of life measurement. Valuations of health states by the general public in Norway.

The EuroQol instrument consists of a self administered questionnaire where subjects are asked to value health states on a visual analogue scale. The instrument is playing a role of linking cross-national data in the field of health status measurement. An experiment in Norway with an alternative lay out added little to the feasibility of the instrument. On the other hand, reducing the number of states to be valued did increase the response rate significantly. Valuations in a random sample of Norwegian subjects were quite similar to valuations made by subjects in England, Holland and Sweden. EuroQol valuations may have to undergo a radical transformation before being used as utility weights for life years, but the similarity in valuations across countries is a promising finding in itself. To the extent that these similarities are validated in later studies, authorities in any one of these four countries wishing to use health status indices in medical decision making, may in the future allow themselves to draw on results obtained in any of the other three countries. Particularly for a small country like Norway there is an obvious advantage in this.