Looking at patients' choices through the lens of expected utility: a critique and research agenda.
The expected utility framework underlies much research in medical decision making. Because the framework requires decisions to be decomposed into probabilities of states and the values of those states, researchers have investigated the two components separately from each other and from patients' actual decisions. The authors propose that it would be productive to focus more research on the relationships among risk perceptions, outcome valuations, and choices in the same decision makers. They outline exploratory analyses based on two existing national surveys, the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey and the Joint Canada/United States Survey of Health.
Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research, and Department of Economics, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey (LBR)
Louise B
LB
Russell
Department of Medical Education, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois (AS)
Alan
A
Schwartz
D002755:Choice Behavior; D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis; D003657:Decision Making; D006801:Humans; D057240:Patient Preference / Q000523:psychology*; D011788:Quality of Life; D018570:Risk Assessment