A Reporting Checklist for Discrete Choice Experiments in Health: The DIRECT Checklist

Background: Reporting standards of discrete choice experiments (DCEs) in health have not kept pace with the growth of this method, with multiple reviews calling for better reporting to improve transparency, assessment of validity and translation. A key missing piece has been the absence of a reporting checklist that details minimum standards of what should be reported, as exists for many other methods used in health economics. 

Methods: This paper reports the development of a reporting checklist for DCEs in health, which involved a scoping review to identify potential items and a Delphi consensus study among 45 DCE experts internationally to select items and guide the wording and structure of the checklist. The Delphi study included a best–worst scaling study for prioritisation. 

Conclusions: The final checklist is presented along with guidance on how to apply it. This checklist can be used by authors to ensure that sufficient detail of a DCE’s methods are reported, providing reviewers and readers with the information they need to assess the quality of the study for themselves. Embedding this reporting checklist into standard practice for health DCEs offers an opportunity to improve consistency of reporting standards, thereby enabling transparency of review and facilitating comparison of studies and their translation into policy and practice.