THE UTILITY OF THE VISUAL ANALOG SCALE IN MEDICAL DECISION-MAKING ANDTECHNOLOGY-ASSESSMENT - IS IT AN ALTERNATIVE TO THE TIME TRADE-OFF

Methods often used for the valuation of health states are the time tra de-off (TTO) and the visual analog scale (VAS). The VAS is easier than the TTO and can be self-administered; however it usually leads to low er scores. In the literature a power transformation of group mean VAS scores to TTO scores has been proposed. We were able to replicate this finding of a power function. We found coefficients that were very sim ilar to those from the literature, for 183 cancer patients. The relati onship existed independently of disease state and health status.