Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 How to define health states 1 2How to measure HSU values 1.2.1 The direct method 1.2.2 The indirect method 1.2.3 Mapping health profiles to health-state utilities 1.3 Whose health-state utilities should be used 1.3.1 General population health-state utilities 1.3.2 Patient health-state utilities 1.4 Research objectives 1.5 Summary of studies Chapter 2 Do Chinese Have Similar Health-State Preferences? A Comparison of the People in China and Chinese Singaporeans 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Methods 2.2.1 Sampling and recruitment 2.2.2 Procedures 2.2.3 EQ-VT 2.2.4 Health states valued 2.2.5 Data analysis 2.3 Results 2.4 Discussion Chapter 3 The Impact of Diabetes on Health-State Utilities 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Methods 3.2.1 Study participants 3.2.2 Survey procedures 3.2.3 Health states valued 3.2.4 Data analysis 3.3 Results 3.4 Discussion Chapter 4 Valuation of EQ-gD-3L Health States in Singapore 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Methods 4.2.1 Sampling and recruitment 4.2.2 The valuation interview 4.2.3 The health states 4.3 Statistical analysis 4.3.1 Calculation of TTO values 4.3.2 Modeling of TTO values 4.3.3 Evaluation of model performance 4.4 Results 4.4.1 Respondents' characteristics 4.4.2 Distribution of TTO values 4.4.3 Modeling analysis 4.5 Discussion Chapter 5 Predicting Preference-Based SF-6D36 Index Scores from the SF-8 Health Survey 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Methods 5.2.1 SF 5.2.2 SF-6D 5.2.3 Data 5.2.4 Model construction 5.2.5 Model estimation and evaluation 5.3 Results 5.3.1 Individual-level prediction 5.3.2 Group-level prediction 5.4 Discussion Chapter 6 Preference-Based SF-6D Scores Derived from the SF-36 and SF-12 Have Different Discriminative Power in a Population Health Survey 6.1 Introduction 6.2 Methods 6.2.1 Data source 6.2.2 Instruments 6.2.3 Data analysis 6.3 Results 6.4 Discussion Chapter 7 Conclusions 7.1 Major findings 7.2 Contributions 7.3 Future studies Chart Index References