In Search of Effective Altruists

The effective altruism movement argues that people wanting to do the most good they can should donate to charities fighting poverty in poor countries overseas, rather than to charities helping people in need in wealthy countries. This is because there is greater need in the developing world meaning it is possible to save lives or improve living conditions at reasonably low cost. However, most people living in developed countries prefer to donate to charities helping people in need in their own country, rather than charities helping people in need in the developing world. This paper analyses why this might be. We conduct a discrete choice experiment to determine the relative importance people place on the effectiveness of a donation, the need of recipients, and whether the donation will be spent at home or overseas. We find that many people place more weight on where the donation will be spent than on how effective it will be. We also find that a significant number of people are not aware, or do not believe, a donation will be more effective in the developing world

Deadlines, Procrastination, and Inattention in Charitable Tasks: A Field Experiment

We conduct a field experiment to analyze the effect of deadline length on charitable tasks. Participants are invited to complete an online survey, with a donation going to charity if they do so. Participants are given either one week, one month or no deadline by which to respond. Completions are lower for the one month deadline, than for the other two treatments, consistent with the model of inattention developed in Taubinsky (2014) and also with the idea that not specifying a deadline conveys urgency

Creating a priority list of non-communicable diseases to support health research funding decision-making

Objective To develop and pilot a framework based on multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) to prioritize non-communicable diseases (NCDs) to support health research funding decision-making. Methods The framework involves identifying NCDs to be prioritized, specifying prioritization criteria and determining their weights from a survey of stakeholders. The mean weights from the survey are applied to the NCDs’ ratings on the criteria to generate a ‘total score’ for each NCD, by which the NCDs are prioritized. Results Nineteen NCDs and five criteria were included. The criteria, in decreasing order of importance (mean weights in parentheses), are: deaths across the population (27.7 %), loss of quality-of-life across the population (23.0 %), cost to patients and families (18.6 %), cost to the health system (17.2 %), and whether vulnerable groups are disproportionately affected (13.4 %). The priority list of NCDs, stratified into four tiers of importance, is: ‘Very critical’ priority: coronary heart disease, back and neck pain, diabetes mellitus; ‘Critical’ priority: dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, stroke; ‘High’ priority: colon and rectum cancer, depressive disorders, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, chronic kidney disease, breast cancer, prostate cancer, arthritis, lung cancer; and ‘Medium’ priority: asthma, hearing loss, melanoma skin cancer, addictive disorders, non-melanoma skin cancer, headaches. Conclusion The results indicate the framework for prioritizing NCDs for research funding is feasible and effective. The framework could also be used for other health conditions

Deadlines, Procrastination, and Forgetting in Charitable Tasks: A Field Experiment

We conduct a field experiment to test theoretical predictions regarding the effect of deadline length on task completion. We place our test in a charitable task setting in which participants are invited to complete an online survey, with a donation going to charity if they do so. Participants are given either one week, one month or no deadline by which to respond. Completions are lowest for the one month deadline and highest when no deadline is specified. Our results point out that a short deadline, and not specifying a deadline, signals urgency. By contrast, providing a longer (one month) deadline gives people permission to procrastinate, with people ultimately forgetting to complete the task

The Non-Monotonic Effect of Deadlines on Task Completion

We conduct a field experiment to test the non-monotonic effect of deadline length on task completion. Participants are invited to complete an online survey in which a donation goes to charity. They are given either one week, one month or no deadline to respond. Responses are lowest for the one-month deadline and highest when no deadline is specified. No deadline and the one-week deadline feature a large number of early responses, while providing a one-month deadline appears to give people permission to procrastinate. If they are inattentive, they might forget to complete the task

Deadlines, Procrastination, and Forgetting in Charitable Tasks: A Field Experiment

We conduct a field experiment to test theoretical predictions regarding the effect of deadline length on task completion. We place our test in a charitable task setting in which participants are invited to complete an online survey, with a donation going to charity if they do so. Participants are given either one week, one month or no deadline by which to respond. Completions are lowest for the one month deadline and highest when no deadline is specified. Our results point out that a short deadline, and not specifying a deadline, signals urgency. By contrast, providing a longer (one month) deadline gives people permission to procrastinate, with people ultimately forgetting to complete the task

Procrastination and the Non-Monotonic Effect of Deadlines on Task Completion

We conduct a field experiment to test the non-monotonic effect of deadline length on task completion. Participants are invited to complete an online survey in which a donation goes to charity. They are given either one week, one month or no deadline to respond. Responses are lowest for the one-month deadline and highest when no deadline is specified. No deadline and the one-week deadline feature a large number of early responses, while providing a one-month deadline appears to give people permission to procrastinate. If they are inattentive, they might forget to complete the task

An eHealth Program for patients undergoing a total hip arthroplasty: Protocol for a randomized controlled trial

Background: Total hip arthroplasty is an effective surgical procedure commonly used worldwide for patients suffering the disabling effects of osteoarthritis when medical therapy is unsuccessful. Traditionally pre- and postoperative information for patients undergoing a hip arthroplasty has been provided by paper-based methods. Electronic health (eHealth) programs to support individualized patient education on preoperative preparation, in-patient care, and home rehabilitation have the potential to increase patient engagement, enhance patient recovery, and reduce potential postoperative complications. Objective: The aim of this study is to compare the addition of an eHealth program versus standard care for pre- and postoperative education on patient outcomes for primary total hip arthroplasty. Methods: One hundred patients undergoing a primary elective total hip arthroplasty will be recruited from a metropolitan hospital in Western Australia to participate in a 6-month parallel randomized control trial. Participants will be randomized to either the standard care group (n=50) and will be given the education booklet and enrolled to attend a 1-hour education session, or the intervention group (n=50), and will receive the same as the standard care plus access to an eHealth program titled “My Hip Journey.” The eHealth program encourages the patient to log in daily, from 2 weeks prior to surgery to 30 days postsurgery. The information on the platform will be aligned with the patient\u27s individual surgical journey and will include exercises to be completed each day for the duration of the program. The primary outcome measure is the Hip Dysfunction and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score, version LK 2.0. Secondary outcome measures include the EuroQoL EQ-5D-5L, a 5-level 5-dimension quality of life measure, and the Self-Efficacy for Managing Chronic Disease Scale. Data will be collected at pre-admission (presurgery) and at 6 weeks, 3 months, and 6 months postsurgery. A patient satisfaction survey will be completed 6 weeks postsurgery and Web-based analytics will be collected 6 months postsurgery. A cost-effectiveness analysis, using the intention-to-treat principle, will be conducted from the hospital’s perspective. Results: Enrollment in the study commenced in January 2018 with recruitment due for completion towards the end of the year. The first results are expected to be submitted for publication in 2019. Conclusions: The outcomes and cost of using an eHealth program to support a patient’s recovery from a hip arthroplasty will be compared with standard care in this study. If the eHealth program is found to be effective, further implementation across clinical practice could lead to improvement in patient outcomes and other surgical areas could be incorporated

A new tool for creating personal and social EQ-5D-5L value sets, including valuing ‘dead’

A new online tool for creating personal and social EQ-5D-5L value sets was recently developed and trialled in New Zealand (NZ). Health state values for each participant are determined using the PAPRIKA method – in the present context, a novel type of adaptive discrete choice experiment – and any health states worse than dead are identified using a binary search algorithm. Following testing and refinement, the tool was distributed in an online survey to a representative sample of NZ adults (N=5112), whose personal value sets were created. Extensive data quality checks were performed, resulting in a ‘high-quality’ sub-sample of 2468 participants whose personal value sets were, in effect, averaged to create a social value set for NZ, as represented by social ‘disutility coefficients’ (consistent with the EQ-5D literature). These results overall and participants’ feedback indicate that the new valuation tool is feasible and acceptable to participants and enables valuation data to be relatively easily and cheaply collected. The tool could also be used in other countries, tested against other methods for creating EQ-5D-5L value sets, applied in personalised medicine and adapted to create value sets for other health descriptive systems