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Purpose The Adult Social Care Outcomes Toolkit for informal carers (ASCOT-Carer) can be used to assess long-term care-related quality of life (LTC-QoL) of adult informal carers of persons using LTC services. The ASCOT-Carer instrument has been translated into several languages, but preference weights reflecting the relative importance of different outcome states are only available for England so far. In this paper, we estimated preference weights for the German version of the ASCOT-Carer for Austria and investigated the value people place on different QoL-outcome states. Methods We used data from a best–worst scaling (BWS) experiment and estimated a scale-adjusted multinomial logit (S-MNL) model to elicit preference weights for the ASCOT-Carer domain-levels. Data were collected using an online survey of the Austrian general population (n = 1001). Results Top levels in the domains of ‘Space and time to be yourself’, ‘Occupation’ and ‘Control over daily life’ were perceived as providing the highest utility, and states with high needs in the same domains seen as particularly undesirable. ‘Personal safety’ was the only domain where levels were roughly equidistant. In all other domains, the difference between the top two levels (‘ideal state’ and ‘no needs’) was very small. Conclusion The paper provides preference weights for the German version of ASCOT-Carer to be used in Austrian populations. Furthermore, the results give insight into which LTC-QoL-outcomes are seen as particularly (un)desirable, and may therefore help to better tailor services directed at informal carers and the persons they care for.

Purpose: Traditionally, researchers have relied on eliciting preferences through face-to-face interviews. Recently, there has been a shift towards using internet-based methods. Different methods of data collection may be a source of variation in the results. In this study, we compare the preferences for the Adult Social Care Outcomes Toolkit (ASCOT) service user measure elicited using best-worst scaling (BWS) via a face-to-face interview and an online survey.\ud Methods: Data were collected from a representative sample of the general population in England. The respondents (face-to-face: n=500; online: n=1,001) completed a survey, which included the BWS experiment involving the ASCOT measure. Each respondent received eight best-worst scenarios and made four choices (best, second best, worst, second worst) in each scenario. Multinomial logit regressions were undertaken to analyse the data taking into account differences in the characteristics of the two samples and the repeated nature of the data.\ud Results: We initially found a number of small significant differences in preferences between the two methods across all ASCOT domains. These differences were substantially reduced – from 15 to five out of 30 coefficients being different at the 5% level – and remained small in value after controlling for differences in observable and unobservable characteristics of the two samples.\ud Conclusions: This comparison demonstrates that face-to-face and internet surveys may lead to fairly similar preferences for social care-related quality of life when differences in sample characteristics are controlled for. With or without a constant sampling frame, studies should carefully design the BWS exercise and provide similar levels of clarification to participants in each survey to minimise the amount of error variance in the choice process.