IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v87y2013icp116-122.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Can capabilities be self-reported? A think aloud study

Author

Listed:
  • Al-Janabi, Hareth
  • Keeley, Thomas
  • Mitchell, Paul
  • Coast, Joanna

Abstract

Direct assessment of capability to function may be useful in healthcare settings, but poses many challenges. This paper reports a first investigation of the feasibility of individuals self-reporting their capabilities and the meaning of the responses. The study was conducted in 2010, using think-aloud interviews with participants in the UK. The findings of the study suggest that the majority of participants were able to comprehend questions about their capabilities, felt able to judge their own capability wellbeing and provided responses in line with this judgement. In a number of cases, for example in relation to ‘autonomy’, participants highlighted that their capability was potentially greater than their functioning. The findings also show varying interpretations of the capability concept, with some participants finding the capability concept unintuitive in relation to specific aspects of life (in particular, ‘attachment’). The findings suggest that guiding individuals in the process of identifying their capabilities may be important in generating consistent responses to capability questions.

Suggested Citation

  • Al-Janabi, Hareth & Keeley, Thomas & Mitchell, Paul & Coast, Joanna, 2013. "Can capabilities be self-reported? A think aloud study," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 116-122.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:87:y:2013:i:c:p:116-122
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2013.03.035
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953613002049
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.socscimed.2013.03.035?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Brazier, John & Ratcliffe, Julie & Salomon, Joshua & Tsuchiya, Aki, 2016. "Measuring and Valuing Health Benefits for Economic Evaluation," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, edition 2, number 9780198725923.
    2. Brouwer, Werner B. F. & van Exel, N. Job A. & Stolk, Elly A., 2005. "Acceptability of less than perfect health states," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 237-246, January.
    3. Brooks, Richard AU -, 1996. "EuroQol: the current state of play," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 53-72, July.
    4. Mallinson, Sara, 2002. "Listening to respondents: : a qualitative assessment of the Short-Form 36 Health Status Questionnaire," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 11-21, January.
    5. Paul Anand & Graham Hunter & Ian Carter & Keith Dowding & Francesco Guala & Martin Van Hees, 2009. "The Development of Capability Indicators," Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(1), pages 125-152.
    6. Daniel Kahneman & Robert Sugden, 2005. "Experienced Utility as a Standard of Policy Evaluation," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 32(1), pages 161-181, September.
    7. Anand, Paul & Krishnakumar, Jaya & Tran, Ngoc Bich, 2011. "Measuring welfare: Latent variable models for happiness and capabilities in the presence of unobservable heterogeneity," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(3-4), pages 205-215, April.
    8. Amartya Sen, 2005. "Human Rights and Capabilities," Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 6(2), pages 151-166.
    9. Grewal, Ini & Lewis, Jane & Flynn, Terry & Brown, Jackie & Bond, John & Coast, Joanna, 2006. "Developing attributes for a generic quality of life measure for older people: Preferences or capabilities?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(8), pages 1891-1901, April.
    10. Richard Cookson, 2005. "QALYs and the capability approach," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 14(8), pages 817-829, August.
    11. Anand, Paul & van Hees, Martin, 2006. "Capabilities and achievements: An empirical study," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 268-284, April.
    12. Hopper, Kim, 2007. "Rethinking social recovery in schizophrenia: What a capabilities approach might offer," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 65(5), pages 868-879, September.
    13. Mandy Ryan & Verity Watson & Vikki Entwistle, 2009. "Rationalising the ‘irrational’: a think aloud study of discrete choice experiment responses," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(3), pages 321-336, March.
    14. Daniel M. Hausman, 2010. "Valuing health: a new proposal," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(3), pages 280-296, March.
    15. Coast, Joanna & Smith, Richard D. & Lorgelly, Paula, 2008. "Welfarism, extra-welfarism and capability: The spread of ideas in health economics," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 67(7), pages 1190-1198, October.
    16. Allison, P. J. & Locker, D. & Feine, J. S., 1997. "Quality of life: A dynamic construct," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 45(2), pages 221-230, July.
    17. Sprangers, Mirjam A. G. & Schwartz, Carolyn E., 1999. "Integrating response shift into health-related quality of life research: a theoretical model," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 48(11), pages 1507-1515, June.
    18. Anand, Paul & Dolan, Paul, 2005. "Equity, capabilities and health," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 219-222, January.
    19. Menzel, Paul & Dolan, Paul & Richardson, Jeff & Olsen, Jan Abel, 2002. "The role of adaptation to disability and disease in health state valuation: a preliminary normative analysis," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 55(12), pages 2149-2158, December.
    20. Coast, Joanna & Flynn, Terry N. & Natarajan, Lucy & Sproston, Kerry & Lewis, Jane & Louviere, Jordan J. & Peters, Tim J., 2008. "Valuing the ICECAP capability index for older people," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 67(5), pages 874-882, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Choices, capabilities, and unanswered questions
      by Chris Sampson in The Academic Health Economists' Blog on 2021-02-10 07:00:04

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jackson, Louise & Al-Janabi, Hareth & Roberts, Tracy & Ross, Jonthan, 2021. "Exploring young people's preferences for STI screening in the UK: A qualitative study and discrete choice experiment," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 279(C).
    2. Philippe Tessier & Josselin Thuilliez, 2018. "Does freedom make a difference?," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 19(8), pages 1189-1205, November.
    3. Hutchinson, Claire & Worley, Anthea & Khadka, Jyoti & Milte, Rachel & Cleland, Jenny & Ratcliffe, Julie, 2022. "Do we agree or disagree? A systematic review of the application of preference-based instruments in self and proxy reporting of quality of life in older people," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 305(C).
    4. Philip Kinghorn & Nafsika Afentou, 2020. "Proxy responses to ICECAP-A: Exploring variation across multiple proxy assessments of capability well-being for the same individuals," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(7), pages 1-14, July.
    5. Hackert, Mariska Q.N. & van Exel, Job & Brouwer, Werner B.F., 2020. "Well-being of Older People (WOOP): Quantitative validation of a new outcome measure for use in economic evaluations," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 259(C).
    6. Helena Hörder & Susanne Gustafsson & Therese Rydberg & Ingmar Skoog & Margda Waern, 2016. "A Cross-Cultural Adaptation of the ICECAP-O: Test–Retest Reliability and Item Relevance in Swedish 70-Year-Olds," Societies, MDPI, vol. 6(4), pages 1-6, September.
    7. Paul Mark Mitchell & Samantha Husbands & Sarah Byford & Philip Kinghorn & Cara Bailey & Tim J. Peters & Joanna Coast, 2021. "Challenges in developing capability measures for children and young people for use in the economic evaluation of health and care interventions," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(9), pages 1990-2003, September.
    8. Joanna Coast, 2019. "Assessing capability in economic evaluation: a life course approach?," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 20(6), pages 779-784, August.
    9. Karimi, M. & Brazier, J. & Paisley, S., 2017. "How do individuals value health states? A qualitative investigation," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 172(C), pages 80-88.
    10. León Tamayo, Dorian Fernando, 2018. "Enfoque de las capacidades," EconStor Preprints 182466, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    11. León Tamayo, Dorian Fernando, 2016. "Enfoque de capacidades en Amartya Sen: Aproximaciones y reflexiones [Capabilities approach in Amartya Sen: Approaches and reflections]," MPRA Paper 120324, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 03 Dec 2016.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hareth Al‐Janabi, 2018. "Do capability and functioning differ? A study of U.K. survey responses," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(3), pages 465-479, March.
    2. Mitchell, Paul Mark & Roberts, Tracy E. & Barton, Pelham M. & Coast, Joanna, 2015. "Assessing sufficient capability: A new approach to economic evaluation," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 71-79.
    3. Coast, Joanna & Smith, Richard D. & Lorgelly, Paula, 2008. "Welfarism, extra-welfarism and capability: The spread of ideas in health economics," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 67(7), pages 1190-1198, October.
    4. Lorgelly, Paula K. & Lorimer, Karen & Fenwick, Elisabeth A.L. & Briggs, Andrew H. & Anand, Paul, 2015. "Operationalising the capability approach as an outcome measure in public health: The development of the OCAP-18," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 68-81.
    5. Simon, Judit & Anand, Paul & Gray, Alastair & Rugkåsa, Jorun & Yeeles, Ksenija & Burns, Tom, 2013. "Operationalising the capability approach for outcome measurement in mental health research," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 187-196.
    6. Paul Anand & Laurence S. J. Roope & Anthony J. Culyer & Ron Smith, 2020. "Disability and multidimensional quality of life: A capability approach to health status assessment," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(7), pages 748-765, July.
    7. Terry N. Flynn & Elisabeth Huynh & Tim J. Peters & Hareth Al‐Janabi & Sam Clemens & Alison Moody & Joanna Coast, 2015. "Scoring the Icecap‐a Capability Instrument. Estimation of a UK General Population Tariff," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(3), pages 258-269, March.
    8. Joanna Coast, 2019. "Assessing capability in economic evaluation: a life course approach?," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 20(6), pages 779-784, August.
    9. Marco Ricardo Téllez Cabrera, 2018. "Giving arguments to operationalize health capabilities in economic evaluations of health interventions," Journal of Social and Economic Development, Springer;Institute for Social and Economic Change, vol. 20(2), pages 240-255, October.
    10. Tellez, Juan & Krishnakumar, Jaya & Bungener, Martine & Le Galès, Catherine, 2016. "Capability deprivation of people with Alzheimer's disease: An empirical analysis using a national survey," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 56-68.
    11. Coast, Joanna, 2018. "A history that goes hand in hand: Reflections on the development of health economics and the role played by Social Science & Medicine, 1967–2017," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 196(C), pages 227-232.
    12. Philippe Tessier & Josselin Thuilliez, 2018. "Does freedom make a difference?," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 19(8), pages 1189-1205, November.
    13. Paul Mark Mitchell & Tracy E. Roberts & Pelham M. Barton & Joanna Coast, 2017. "Applications of the Capability Approach in the Health Field: A Literature Review," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 133(1), pages 345-371, August.
    14. Paula K. Lorgelly & Kenny D. Lawson & Elisabeth A.L. Fenwick & Andrew H. Briggs, 2010. "Outcome Measurement in Economic Evaluations of Public Health Interventions: a Role for the Capability Approach?," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 7(5), pages 1-16, May.
    15. Giulia Greco & Paula Lorgelly & Inthira Yamabhai, 2016. "Outcomes in Economic Evaluations of Public Health Interventions in Low‐ and Middle‐Income Countries: Health, Capabilities and Subjective Wellbeing," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(S1), pages 83-94, February.
    16. Sebastian Himmler & Job van Exel & Werner Brouwer, 2020. "Happy with Your Capabilities? Valuing ICECAP-O and ICECAP-A States Based on Experienced Utility Using Subjective Well-Being Data," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 40(4), pages 498-510, May.
    17. Coast, Joanna & Flynn, Terry N. & Natarajan, Lucy & Sproston, Kerry & Lewis, Jane & Louviere, Jordan J. & Peters, Tim J., 2008. "Valuing the ICECAP capability index for older people," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 67(5), pages 874-882, September.
    18. Kibel, Mia & Vanstone, Meredith, 2017. "Reconciling ethical and economic conceptions of value in health policy using the capabilities approach: A qualitative investigation of Non-Invasive Prenatal Testing," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 195(C), pages 97-104.
    19. Wildman, John & McMeekin, Peter & Grieve, Eleanor & Briggs, Andrew, 2016. "Economic evaluation of integrated new technologies for health and social care: Suggestions for policy makers, users and evaluators," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 141-148.
    20. John Brazier & Donna Rowen & Milad Karimi & Tessa Peasgood & Aki Tsuchiya & Julie Ratcliffe, 2018. "Experience-based utility and own health state valuation for a health state classification system: why and how to do it," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 19(6), pages 881-891, July.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:87:y:2013:i:c:p:116-122. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.