IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/patien/v10y2017i6d10.1007_s40271-017-0245-9.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Choosing a Doctor: Does Presentation Format Affect the Way Consumers Use Health Care Performance Information?

Author

Listed:
  • Patricia Kenny

    (University of Technology Sydney)

  • Stephen Goodall

    (University of Technology Sydney)

  • Deborah J. Street

    (University of Technology Sydney)

  • Jessica Greene

    (City University of New York)

Abstract

Background Choosing a new health service provider can be difficult and is dependent on the type and clarity of the information available. This study examines if the presentation of service quality information affects the decisions of consumers choosing a general medical practice. Objectives The aim was to examine the impact of presentation format on attribute level interpretation and relative importance. Methods A discrete choice experiment eliciting preferences for a general medical practice was conducted using four different presentation formats for service quality attributes: (1) frequency and percentage with an icon array, (2) star ratings, (3) star ratings with a text benchmark, and (4) percentage alone. A total of 1208 respondents from an online panel were randomised to see two formats, answering nine choices for each, where one was a dominated choice. Logistic regression was used to assess the impact of presentation format on the probability of choosing a dominated alternative. A generalised multinomial logit model was used to estimate the relative importance of the attribute levels. Results The probability of incorrectly choosing a dominated alternative was significantly higher when the quality information was presented as a percentage relative to a frequency with icon array, star rating or bench-marked star rating. Preferences for a practice did not differ significantly by presentation format, nor did the probability of finding the information difficult to understand. Conclusions Quantitative health service quality information will be more useful to consumers if presented by combining the numerical information with a graphic, or using a star rating if appropriate for the context.

Suggested Citation

  • Patricia Kenny & Stephen Goodall & Deborah J. Street & Jessica Greene, 2017. "Choosing a Doctor: Does Presentation Format Affect the Way Consumers Use Health Care Performance Information?," The Patient: Patient-Centered Outcomes Research, Springer;International Academy of Health Preference Research, vol. 10(6), pages 739-751, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:patien:v:10:y:2017:i:6:d:10.1007_s40271-017-0245-9
    DOI: 10.1007/s40271-017-0245-9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s40271-017-0245-9
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s40271-017-0245-9?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Scott, Anthony & Watson, M. Stuart & Ross, Sue, 2003. "Eliciting preferences of the community for out of hours care provided by general practitioners: a stated preference discrete choice experiment," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 56(4), pages 803-814, February.
    2. Rechel, Bernd & McKee, Martin & Haas, Marion & Marchildon, Gregory P. & Bousquet, Frederic & Blümel, Miriam & Geissler, Alexander & van Ginneken, Ewout & Ashton, Toni & Saunes, Ingrid Sperre & Anell, , 2016. "Public reporting on quality, waiting times and patient experience in 11 high-income countries," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 120(4), pages 377-383.
    3. Mark Harrison & Dan Rigby & Caroline Vass & Terry Flynn & Jordan Louviere & Katherine Payne, 2014. "Risk as an Attribute in Discrete Choice Experiments: A Systematic Review of the Literature," The Patient: Patient-Centered Outcomes Research, Springer;International Academy of Health Preference Research, vol. 7(2), pages 151-170, June.
    4. Philips, Hilde & Mahr, Dominik & Remmen, Roy & Weverbergh, Marcel & De Graeve, Diana & Van Royen, Paul, 2012. "Predicting the place of out-of-hours care—A market simulation based on discrete choice analysis," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 106(3), pages 284-290.
    5. Yuanyuan Gu & Arne Risa Hole & Stephanie Knox, 2013. "Fitting the generalized multinomial logit model in Stata," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 13(2), pages 382-397, June.
    6. Fiebig, D.G. & Viney, R. & Haas, M. & Knox, S. & Street, D. & Weisberg, E. & Bateson, D., 2015. "Complexity and doctor choices when discussing contraceptives," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 15/14, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mahieu, Pierre-Alexandre & Andersson, Henrik & Beaumais, Olivier & Crastes dit Sourd, Romain & Hess, François-Charles & Wolff, François-Charles, 2017. "Stated preferences: a unique database composed of 1657 recent published articles in journals related to agriculture, environment, or health," Review of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Studies, Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA), vol. 98(3), November.
    2. Bartczak, Anna, 2015. "The role of social and environmental attitudes in non-market valuation," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 357-365.
    3. Emma L Giles & Frauke Becker & Laura Ternent & Falko F Sniehotta & Elaine McColl & Jean Adams, 2016. "Acceptability of Financial Incentives for Health Behaviours: A Discrete Choice Experiment," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(6), pages 1-19, June.
    4. Ouvrard, Benjamin & Abildtrup, Jens & Bostedt, Göran & Stenger, Anne, 2019. "Determinants of forest owners attitudes towards wood ash recycling in Sweden - Can the nutrient cycle be closed?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 164(C), pages 1-1.
    5. Megha Swami & Hugh Gravelle & Anthony Scott & Jenny Williams, 2018. "Hours worked by general practitioners and waiting times for primary care," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(10), pages 1513-1532, October.
    6. Wendong Zhang & Brent Sohngen, 2018. "Do U.S. Anglers Care about Harmful Algal Blooms? A Discrete Choice Experiment of Lake Erie Recreational Anglers," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 100(3), pages 868-888.
    7. Tobias Börger & Oliver Frör & Sören Weiß, 2017. "The relationship between perceived difficulty and randomness in discrete choice experiments: Investigating reasons for and consequences of difficulty," Discussion Papers in Environment and Development Economics 2017-03, University of St. Andrews, School of Geography and Sustainable Development.
    8. Balogh, Péter & Békési, Dániel & Gorton, Matthew & Popp, József & Lengyel, Péter, 2016. "Consumer willingness to pay for traditional food products," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 176-184.
    9. Kara Hanson & Barbara McPake & Pamela Nakamba & Luke Archard, 2005. "Preferences for hospital quality in Zambia: results from a discrete choice experiment," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 14(7), pages 687-701, July.
    10. John F. P. Bridges & Jui-Hua Tsai & Ellen Janssen & Norah L. Crossnohere & Ryan Fischer & Holly Peay, 2019. "How Do Members of the Duchenne and Becker Muscular Dystrophy Community Perceive a Discrete-Choice Experiment Incorporating Uncertain Treatment Benefit? An Application of Research as an Event," The Patient: Patient-Centered Outcomes Research, Springer;International Academy of Health Preference Research, vol. 12(2), pages 247-257, April.
    11. Caroline Vass & Dan Rigby & Katherine Payne, 2019. "“I Was Trying to Do the Maths”: Exploring the Impact of Risk Communication in Discrete Choice Experiments," The Patient: Patient-Centered Outcomes Research, Springer;International Academy of Health Preference Research, vol. 12(1), pages 113-123, February.
    12. Esther Bekker-Grob & Bas Donkers & Marcel Jonker & Elly Stolk, 2015. "Sample Size Requirements for Discrete-Choice Experiments in Healthcare: a Practical Guide," The Patient: Patient-Centered Outcomes Research, Springer;International Academy of Health Preference Research, vol. 8(5), pages 373-384, October.
    13. Scott, Anthony & Witt, Julia, 2020. "Loss aversion, reference dependence and diminishing sensitivity in choice experiments," Journal of choice modelling, Elsevier, vol. 37(C).
    14. Feil, J.-H. & Anastassiadis, F. & Mußhoff, O. & Kasten, P., 2016. "Analysing Farmers’ Preferences fo Collaborative Arrangements: An Experimental Approach," Proceedings “Schriften der Gesellschaft für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften des Landbaues e.V.”, German Association of Agricultural Economists (GEWISOLA), vol. 51, March.
    15. Scott, Anthony, 2002. "Identifying and analysing dominant preferences in discrete choice experiments: An application in health care," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 383-398, June.
    16. Haotian Cheng & Dayton M. Lambert & Karen L. DeLong & Kimberly L. Jensen, 2022. "Inattention, availability bias, and attribute premium estimation for a biobased product," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 53(2), pages 274-288, March.
    17. Yuanyuan Gu & Richard Norman & Rosalie Viney, 2014. "Estimating Health State Utility Values From Discrete Choice Experiments—A Qaly Space Model Approach," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(9), pages 1098-1114, September.
    18. Arne Risa Hole & Hong Il Yoo, 2017. "The use of heuristic optimization algorithms to facilitate maximum simulated likelihood estimation of random parameter logit models," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 66(5), pages 997-1013, November.
    19. Galassi, Veronica & Madlener, Reinhard, 2016. "Shall I Open the Window? An Experiment on Effort and Habits in Thermal-Comfort Adjustment Practices," FCN Working Papers 19/2016, E.ON Energy Research Center, Future Energy Consumer Needs and Behavior (FCN).
    20. Bansal, Prateek & Kessels, Roselinde & Krueger, Rico & Graham, Daniel J., 2022. "Preferences for using the London Underground during the COVID-19 pandemic," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 160(C), pages 45-60.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:patien:v:10:y:2017:i:6:d:10.1007_s40271-017-0245-9. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.