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Eliciting Preferences from Choices: Discrete Choice Experiments

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Handbook of Research Methods in Health Social Sciences

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Abstract

Discrete choice experiments (DCEs) have been widely used as a research tool to elicit the preferences of patients, clinicians, the community, and policy-makers for a range of health-related questions including complex interventions, treatment options, health programs (e.g., cancer screening) and policies, and health service delivery. In a DCE, treatments or health programs are described by a set of attributes with varying levels, for example, health outcomes (harms and benefits), cost, time, properties of the procedure (e.g., injection or tablet), and so on. The participant is asked to choose their preferred treatment or program. By systematically varying the attribute levels across a range of choices, preferences for health goods and services can be calculated. Unlike other preference elicitation techniques such as ranking or rating, DCEs are underpinned by a well-established and robust theoretical framework that allows estimation of a range of outputs, including the relative importance of individual attributes within a multi-attribute health program (e.g., waiting time, travel time, type of care), the trade-offs individuals may be willing to accept between attributes (e.g., side effects and survival), as well as willingness to pay and uptake of health programs. This chapter provides an overview of the theory and application of DCEs.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Public Health, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Martin Howell & Kirsten Howard

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  1. Martin Howell
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  2. Kirsten Howard
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Correspondence to Martin Howell .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Science and Health, Western Sydney University, Penrith, NSW, Australia

    Pranee Liamputtong

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Howell, M., Howard, K. (2019). Eliciting Preferences from Choices: Discrete Choice Experiments. In: Liamputtong, P. (eds) Handbook of Research Methods in Health Social Sciences. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5251-4_93

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