Evaluation of three methods assessing the relative value of a dental program

The aim of this study was to evaluate three commonly used methods for preference measurement in medical and dental programs.

In a questionnaire filled in by 156 first-year medical (n=120) and dental (n=36) students, they were asked to evaluate five programs, each costing approximately 2 million euros annually. The programs were helicopter ambulance service, MPR vaccination (measles, parotitis and rubella), breast cancer screening, 250 hip replacement operations, and a dental check-up program for 7-year-olds.

The respondents were willing to make the highest donations for running the helicopter ambulance service (39 euros) and least for the dental check-up programme (14 euros) (p<0.01). When using the visual analog scale (VAS) method to evaluate the importance of the five programs, MPR vaccination was considered the most important (score 88), and hip replacement operations and dental check-up the least important (scores 68) (p<0.01). With the rank order (RO) method, MPR vaccinations were ranked the highest (score 1.8) and hip replacement operations (score 4.2) and dental check-up (score 4.0) the lowest (p<0.01). The respondents considered VAS and RO methods significantly easier than the willingness to pay method (p<0.001).

It is concluded that depending on the nature of the information required, each of the three methods can be used for assessing preferences. The willingness to pay method seemed to be the most difficult to comprehend, but it provides more detailed and ready-to-use information for economic evaluations than the other two methods.