• Brendan Mulhern, Joshua Pink, Donna Rowen, Simon Borghs, Thomas Butt, Dyfrig Hughes, Antony Marson, and John Brazier.
• Centre for Health Economics Research and Evaluation, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia; School of Health and Related Research, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, UK. Electronic address: Brendan.mulhern@chere.uts.edu.au.
• Value Health. 2017 Apr 1; 20 (4): 687-693.

BackgroundThere is debate about the psychometric characteristics of the three-level EuroQol five-dimensional questionnaire (EQ-5D-3L) for use in epilepsy. In response to the concerns, an epilepsy-specific preference-based measure (NEWQOL-6D) was developed. The psychometric characteristics of the NEWQOL-6D, however, have not been assessed.ObjectivesTo investigate the validity and responsiveness of the EQ-5D-3L and the Quality of Life in Newly Diagnosed Epilepsy Instrument-six dimensions (NEWQOL-6D) for use in the assessment of treatments for newly diagnosed focal epilepsy.MethodsThe analysis used data from the Standard And New Antiepileptic Drugs trial including patients with focal epilepsy. We assessed convergent validity using correlations, and known-group validity across different epilepsy and general health severity indicators using analysis of variance and effect sizes. The responsiveness of the measures to change over time was assessed using standardized response means. We also assessed agreement between the measures.ResultsThere was some level of convergence and agreement between the measures in terms of utility score but divergence in the concepts measured by the descriptive systems. Both instruments displayed known-group validity, with significant differences between severity groups, and generally slightly larger effect sizes for the NEWQOL-6D across the epilepsy-specific indicators. Evidence for responsiveness was less clear, with small to moderate standardized response means demonstrating different levels of change across different indicators.ConclusionsThere was an overall tendency for the NEWQOL-6D to better reflect differences across groups, but this does not translate into large absolute utility differences. Both the EQ-5D-3L and the NEWQOL-6D show some evidence of validity for providing utility values for economic evaluations in newly diagnosed focal epilepsy.Copyright © 2017 International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR). Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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