Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy Staff Publications
Publication Date
3-1-2024
Journal
Patient
DOI
10.1007/s40271-024-00672-z
PMID
38363501
PMCID
PMC10894089
PubMedCentral® Posted Date
2-16-2024
PubMedCentral® Full Text Version
Post-print
Published Open-Access
yes
Keywords
Humans, Choice Behavior, Reproducibility of Results, Patient Preference, Surveys and Questionnaires
Abstract
Discrete-choice experiments (DCEs) are a frequently used method to explore the preferences of patients and other decision-makers in health. Pretesting is an essential stage in the design of a high-quality choice experiment and involves engaging with representatives of the target population to improve the readability, presentation, and structure of the preference instrument. The goal of pretesting in DCEs is to improve the validity, reliability, and relevance of the survey, while decreasing sources of bias, burden, and error associated with preference elicitation, data collection, and interpretation of the data. Despite its value to inform DCE design, pretesting lacks documented good practices or clearly reported applied examples. The purpose of this paper is: (1) to define pretesting and describe the pretesting process specifically in the context of a DCE, (2) to present a practical guide and pretesting interview discussion template for researchers looking to conduct a rigorous pretest of a DCE, and (3) to provide an illustrative example of how these resources were operationalized to inform the design of a complex DCE aimed at eliciting tradeoffs between personal privacy and societal benefit in the context of a police method known as investigative genetic genealogy (IGG).