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Putting the Choice in Choice Tasks: Incorporating Preference Elicitation Tasks in Health Preference Research

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Abstract

Choice-based preference elicitation methods such as the discrete choice experiment (DCE) present hypothetical choices to respondents, with an expectation that these hypothetical choices accurately reflect a ‘real world’ health-related decision context and that consequently the choice data can be held to be a true representation of the respondent’s health or treatment preferences. For this to be the case, careful consideration needs to be given to the format of the choice task in a choice experiment. The overarching aim of this paper is to highlight important aspects to consider when designing and ‘setting up’ the choice tasks to be presented to respondents in a DCE. This includes the importance of considering the potential impact of format (e.g. choice context, choice set presentation and size) as well as choice set content (e.g. labelled and unlabelled choice sets and inclusion of reference alternatives) and choice questions (stated choice versus additional questions designed to explore complete preference orders) on the preference estimates that are elicited from studies. We endeavoure to instil a holistic approach to choice task design that considers format alongside content, experimental design and analysis.

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Acknowledgements/Funding

This research received no specific funding. Jennifer Whitty is an employee of Evidera, a clinical research organisation that receives funding from research contracts for undertaking patient preference research. Editorial services were provided by Fritz Hamme and Michael Grossi of Evidera.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Patient-Centred Research, Evidera, London, UK

    Jennifer A. Whitty

  2. Norwich Medical School, The University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK

    Jennifer A. Whitty

  3. Department of Health Economics Wellbeing and Society, Australian National University, Acton, ACT, Australia

    Emily Lancsar

  4. Centre for Health Economics Research and Evaluation, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Richard De Abreu Lourenco

  5. Menzies Centre for Health Policy and Economics, Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia

    Kirsten Howard

  6. Erasmus School of Health Policy & Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

    Elly A. Stolk

  7. EuroQol Research Foundation, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

    Elly A. Stolk

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Whitty, J.A., Lancsar, E., De Abreu Lourenco, R. et al. Putting the Choice in Choice Tasks: Incorporating Preference Elicitation Tasks in Health Preference Research. Patient (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40271-024-00696-5

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