When some types of treatment improve health but others improve wellbeing, it can be difficult to decide where it is best to invest, when budgets are limited. This means we need to know which aspects of health and wellbeing are most important to people. This study aims to find this out.

In terms of health we will look at five items: mobility; self-care; usual activities; pain/discomfort; and anxiety/depression. In terms of wellbeing we will look at five items: having love, friendship and support; feeling settled and secure; achieving and progressing in life; enjoyment and pleasure; independence.

To find out which of these aspects of heath and wellbeing are most important, we’ll use two methods. Using two methods allows us to see if they give the same answers. Both methods will collect information from the general public through an online survey. The first method is called ‘best-worst-scaling’. Survey respondents will see descriptions of different health and wellbeing states. For each situation they are shown, they are asked to decide what is the best thing and what is the worst thing about that situation. Their answers can be used to work out how important each of the ten different aspects of health and wellbeing is. The second method is called a ‘Budget Allocation Exercise’. Survey respondents are given an imaginary budget to split between the ten aspects of health and wellbeing. These answers will provide a different way of working out how important each aspect of health and wellbeing is.

To see if importance differs for people in different circumstances, we will collect information about their age, ethnicity, health etc. When we have all this information, we can tell national decision-makers which areas of health and wellbeing are most important to the public. Decision makers can then use this to help guide decisions between different treatments.