Are symbols useful and culturally acceptable in health-state valuation studies? An exploratory study in a multi-ethnic Asian population

BACKGROUND: Symbols have been used in health state valuation studies to help subjects distinguish the severity of various characteristics of a given health state. Symbols used in such studies need to be evaluated for their cross-cultural appropriateness because a given symbol may have different meanings or acceptability in different cultures, which may affect results of such studies. OBJECTIVES: To evaluate if using symbols to differentiate …