Health Preference Research: An Overview

Health preference research (HPR) is dedicated to understanding the value of health and health-related goods and services. The mantra in HPR is ‘‘Choice defines value’’. With a better understanding of what patients want, providers, regulators, and policy makers can better meet the patient’s needs. For this, researchers typically design and conduct discrete-choice experiments (DCEs), a survey method that quantitatively measures what people want. Unlike in ordinary consumption, choices regarding health are often difficult to observe, are infrequently made, and entail complex and challenging trade-offs (e.g., the quality vs. quantity of life). In DCEs, participants are asked to choose between discrete alternatives based on their preferences and the attributes of each alternative. The effect of the attributes on choice defines the value of health and health-related goods and services from the perspective of a target population. Subgroup analysis can be used to test for distinct preferences within groups (market segmentation). Preference estimates and segmentation results may be incorporated into cost-effectiveness analyses (CEAs), multi-criteria decision analyses (MCDAs), or shared decision making (SDM). This overview provides a brief introduction to the field’s resources, challenges, terminology, and relevance.