A vignette-based approach to stakeholder-based health need elicitation: Overcoming methodological heterogeneity and capturing implicit needs

Stakeholder-based health need elicitation is a critical component of health needs assessment, yet commonly relies on direct questioning methods (interviews, focus groups, and surveys) that yield heterogeneous and experience-driven responses, limiting comparability and decision relevance. This paper reviews the existing literature on stakeholder elicitation methods in health need research, identifies their principal methodological limitations, and proposes a vignette-based approach designed to standardize the elicitation context and reduce bias associated with individually salient experiences. By presenting stakeholders with realistic, contextually grounded scenarios, the method facilitates the emergence of both explicit and implicit needs while improving the comparability of responses across participants. The approach is adaptable to different stakeholder groups through tailored vignette structures and questioning strategies, ranging from open-ended exploration to structured decision-making prompts. The integration of voice response collection further enables the analysis of paralinguistic cues (tone, hesitation, and affective markers), enhancing the interpretive depth of the analysis and facilitating the identification of high priority but under-reported needs.