Creating an SF-6Dv2 social value set for New Zealand

The SF-6D health descriptive system and its second version published in 2020, the SF-6Dv2, is used worldwide for valuing health-related quality of life (HRQoL) for economic evaluation and measuring patient-reported health outcomes. In this study, a valuation tool was developed and applied to create a social value set, comprising 18,750 health state values, for the SF-6Dv2 for New Zealand (NZ). This tool was adapted and extended from the one used to create a social value set for the EQ-5D-5L, a simpler health descriptive system with fewer dimensions and health states. The tool implements the PAPRIKA method, a type of adaptive discrete choice experiment, and a binary search algorithm to identify health states worse than dead and has extensive data quality controls to ensure the validity and reliability of the social value set derived from participants' personal value sets. The tool, accompanied by a short introductory video designed specifically for the SF-6Dv2, was distributed via an online survey to a large representative sample of adult New Zealanders in June-July 2022. The tool's data quality controls enabled participants who failed to understand or sincerely engage with the valuation tasks to be identified and excluded, resulting in the participants being pared down to a sub-sample of 2985 'high-quality' participants whose personal value sets were averaged for the social value set. These results, including participants' positive feedback, demonstrate the feasibility and acceptability of using the tool to value larger health descriptive systems such as the SF-6Dv2. Having successfully created an SF-6Dv2 social value set for NZ, the valuation tool can be readily applied to other countries, used to generate personal value sets for personalised medicine and adapted to create value sets for other health descriptive systems.