Project Summary

Background

Health economic evaluations are routinely called on to inform decisions on what programmes, interventions or treatments should be provided to adults and children. In studies that adopt a wide, societal perspective, it is important that all salient inputs and costs are accounted for, including 'opportunity costs' incurred by individuals due to displaced (work or leisure) time. However, there are few insights into how to estimate the opportunity cost of displaced time in children and young people (CYP). This gap in available methods is reflected in the limited and inconsistent inclusion of such costs in the applied literature.

Aims

To produce knowledge and methods that will help researchers to value and include CYP’s time-related costs in economic evaluations.

Investigation plan

The project's objectives will be pursued through 6 interrelated work packages (WPs).

• In WP1, we will explore what uncertainties or beliefs stop researchers from including CYP time-related costs in paediatric economic evaluations. To do so, we will carry out an international online survey with people who produce and use economic evaluations.
• In WP2, we will carry out a Delphi study to produce guidance on when it may be justifiable to leave time-related costs out of calculations
• In WP3, we will focus on measuring displaced time. In doing so, we will produce a generic resource use questionnaire comprising questions about forgone time which researchers will be able to incorporate in their data collection process or forms.
• In WP4, we will carry out focus groups to understand what factors affect the value CYP they place on their time and look into appropriate ways to elicit this value, including different elicitation techniques (contingent valuation and discrete choice experiments) and formats. We will create preliminary versions of elicitation exercises and test these in through cognitive (‘think aloud’) interviewing with CYP respondents. This will help us identify how best to elicit CYP views in the subsequent WP.
• In WP5, we will administer the elicitation exercises to a large, nationally representative sample of CYP identified through online panel membership. We will collect and analyse the responses using appropriate statistical methods to find out what value CYP place on their time and how/whether this is moderated by different factors/conditions or varies across age groups.
• In WP6, we will hold a Knowledge Exchange and Dissemination (KED) workshop to discuss key findings, debate and determine how they can be used in practice and identify areas for future work.

Outcomes

This work aims to produce methods and tools to capture and reflect time-related costs in economic evaluations of interventions for CYP. This will address a methodological gap and help researchers produce, and policy-makers use, more dependable evidence for decision-making in non-adult populations. Better decision-making improves people’s lives and helps ensure the sustainability of the NHS.

News

May 2023

• Round 2 of Delphi study is now open!

April 2023

• Work for WP2 (Delphi study) is underway. Engagement with Round 1 of our Delphi study has exceeded expectations: we received 90 responses which we have just started analysing!
• We're in the programme! Our WP1 work will be presented at the iHEA World Congress 2023 South Africa!

Dissemination

To ensure findings reach relevant stakeholders, I will disseminate outputs to the research community (via articles, presentations/seminars/newsletters, social media/website), to policy-makers (through presentation at NICE and NHS England, events/conferences, the KED) and to the public (with CYP representatives, through accessible summaries, video animations and press-release articles sent to CYP networks and forums).

Dissemination News