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Fitting observed and theoretical choices – women's choices about prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome
Author(s) -
Seror Valerie
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
health economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.55
H-Index - 109
eISSN - 1099-1050
pISSN - 1057-9230
DOI - 10.1002/hec.1276
Subject(s) - cumulative prospect theory , miscarriage , prospect theory , face (sociological concept) , loss aversion , expected utility hypothesis , rank (graph theory) , psychology , pregnancy , medicine , economics , mathematics , microeconomics , financial economics , social science , combinatorics , biology , sociology , genetics
Choices regarding prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome – the most frequent chromosomal defect – are particularly relevant to decision analysis, since women's decisions are based on the assessment of their risk of carrying a child with Down syndrome, and involve tradeoffs (giving birth to an affected child vs procedure‐related miscarriage). The aim of this study, based on face‐to‐face interviews with 78 women aged 25–35 with prior experience of pregnancy, was to compare the women' expressed choices towards prenatal diagnosis with those derived from theoretical models of choice (expected utility theory, rank‐dependent theory, and cumulative prospect theory). The main finding obtained in this study was that the cumulative prospect model fitted the observed choices best: both subjective transformation of probabilities and loss aversion, which are basic features of the cumulative prospect model, have to be taken into account to make the observed choices consistent with the theoretical ones. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.