Development of Population Tariffs for the ICECAP-A Instrument for Hungary and their Comparison With the UK Tariffs

The ICEpop CAPability measure for Adults (ICECAP-A) was developed to assess the capability well-being of adults for use in economic evaluations. Currently, ICECAP-A tariffs are available only for the UK population. The objectives of this study were to develop a Hungarian tariff set for the ICECAP-A instrument and to explore intercountry differences between the Hungarian and the UK value sets.

A survey was conducted by computer-assisted personal interviews on a sample representative of the Hungarian adult population (N = 1000) to elicit their preferences regarding ICECAP-A attributes with the use of a best-worst scaling choice task. A latent class multinomial logit model with continuous variance scale was used to estimate the weights for each of the 4 capability levels of all 5 ICECAP-A attributes, namely, attachment, stability, achievement, enjoyment, and autonomy.

The model identified 2 preference classes with approximately equal share. The first class had a stronger relative preference for autonomy and achievement, whereas the second class had a strong preference for attachment. Multivariate analysis of the classes revealed that women, pensioners, people who are married or living in a partnership, and people with poorer health status are characteristics associated with the latter class membership (preference for attachment). Population tariffs were estimated from the model. Overall, attachment was found to be the most important attribute, followed by stability, enjoyment, achievement, and autonomy.

Hungarian tariffs are largely consistent with those found for the United Kingdom; nevertheless, autonomy seems to be less important in Hungary compared with the United Kingdom.