OBJECTIVES: To elicit preferences for the spectrum of health states associated with Stage III colon cancer (CRC) and to explore the effect of neuropathy associated with current standard of care for adjuvant treatment. METHODS: We interviewed CRC patients and clinicians, developed health states and used time trade-off (TTO) to elicit preferences from a convenience sample of CRC patients and community members. We elicited preferences for 7 health states: remission (REM); adjuvant therapy with no (ADJ_NO), mild (ADJ_MLD), moderate (ADJ_MOD), and severe (ADJ_SEV) neuropathy; metastatic stable (MET_ST); and metastatic progressive (MET_PR) disease. Each subject valued a randomly selected subset of 5 health states. T-tests were used to test for differences in preferences. RESULTS: Mean ages of the 49 patients and 49 community members were 60.6 and 59.8 years, respectively. 51% and 57% were male, respectively. Mean TTO values (95% CIs) for patients/community members were: REM 0.87 (0.81, 0.93)/0.83 (0.77, 0.89); ADJ_NO 0.67 (0.55, 0.80)/0.62 (0.50, 0.74); ADJ_MLD 0.65 (0.49, 0.82)/0.52 (0.39, 0.65); ADJ_MOD 0.58 (0.40, 0.76)/0.48 (0.35, 0.61); ADJ_SEV 0.48 (0.30, 0.65)/0.35 (0.22, 0.49); MET_ST 0.46 (0.30, 0.62)/0.54 (0.42, 0.65); MET PR 0.38 (0.21, 0.56/0.21 (0.09, 0.34). Significant differences were observed for both groups between TTO for REM and adjuvant health states and between ADJ_NO and metastatic health states (p<0.04), except for ADJ_NO vs. MET_S within the patient group. There was a non-significant trend for patients to place a higher TTO value on all health states than community members (p=0.20). CONCLUSION: These findings highlight the trade-offs between the disutility of adjuvant treatment (particularly with moderate to severe neuropathy) and the higher utility of remission, and the severe utility loss during metastatic disease. The preference values obtained from this study will be useful for informing cost-utility analyses of treatment through progression of colon cancer.