Society for Medical Decision Making

Session Summary

A variety of open-ended and closed ended survey methods are used to study what people think about issues in bioethics and to inform policy decisions. These methods can be used to engage people in bioethics debates and to assess how widespread certain beliefs, attitudes, and/or concerns are in society. To inform policy, these methods can help gauge what the public thinks about policy actions as an input into policy decisions. They can also examine how policymakers trade-off different aspects of policies and make choices, deepening our understanding of policy processes, informing research directions, and improving research dissemination. Despite the value of these approaches, there can be concerns about the validity of these methods and their capacity to reach a certain degree of statistical rigor. Researchers can increase the rigor of surveys in bioethics and policy research by incorporating experimental designs. Three broad classes of survey methods with experimental designs currently exist: Randomized vignettes, choice experiments, and prioritization tasks.

Through this course participants will gain a greater awareness of a range of survey methods that incorporate experimental design. There will be opportunities to gain hands-on experience in developing experimental designs, statistical analysis, and interpreting findings. Participants will also gain a deeper understanding of which methods may be best for answering a range of questions relevant to bioethics and health policy research.

Learning Objectives

• To have a greater awareness of the variety of survey methods using experimental designs and to understand their similarities and differences.
• To gain practical skills in the development, use, and analysis of survey methods that incorporate experimental design. 
• To have great knowledge of how survey methods using experimental designs have been used to bioethics and health policy research and to develop critical evaluation skills in identifying the strength and weaknesses of their application.

Pre-Course Preparation

A general understanding of survey methodologies, sampling, and statistical analysis would be advantageous. Interest and knowledge in bioethics and health policy applications would be beneficial, but not necessarily required.

Time Allocation & Topic Outline

Section 1: Motivation

i.                     Why use surveys to understand what people believe in bioethics and policy research

ii.                   Traditional approaches – strengths and weaknesses

iii.                 Introduction to using experimental designs (randomized vignettes, choice experiments, prioritization exercises

Section 2: Randomized vignettes

i.                     Overall approach and motivation for using randomized vignettes

ii.                   Examples of randomized vignettes in bioethics and policy research

iii.                 Hands on exercise in design and analysis

Section 3: Choice experiments

i.                     What approaches are used for choice experiments in bioethics and policy research

ii.                   Examples of choice experiments in bioethics and policy research

iii.                 Hands on exercise in design and analysis

Section 4: Prioritization exercises

i.                     What prioritization exercises are used in bioethics and policy research

ii.                   Examples of prioritization exercises in bioethics and policy research

iii.                 Hands on exercise in design and analysis

Section 5: Comparing different survey methods incorporating experimental design

i.                     Similarities and differences across the methods

ii.                   Which method is best for which types of bioethics and policy questions

iii.                 Discussion about methods and Q&A

Faculty Background & Qualifications

John F P Bridges PhD is a Professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics (BMI) at The Ohio State University College of Medicine. An economist by training, John has devoted his career to advancing the science of patient engagement. His research uses theory-driven survey methods to understand the preferences and priorities of patients and other stakeholders in medicine. John was the founding editor of The Patient in 2007 and was founding chair of numerous groups and task forces within the International Society of Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR). The author of over 260 peer-reviewed publications, he is frequently engaged as an expert on methods for measuring patient preferences and their application in a wide variety of fields, including regulatory science, cancer control, public health, genetics, ethics, and artificial intelligence. His research on patient preferences is supported, in part, by an Innovation in Regulatory Science Award from Burroughs Wellcome Fund.

Natalie Riva Smith PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the University of Pittsburg School of Public Health. She works to advance public health by generating tools and evidence to inform program and policy decision making. Her research program emphasizes applying a variety of decision science methods such as stated preference methods, economic evaluation, simulation modeling, and other decision analysis approaches. She is also trained in systems thinking, biostatistics, network analysis, health services research, and econometrics. She completed a Post-Doc withing the Department of Population Health at Harvard University. She earned her PhD in Health Policy and Management and her MS in Biostatistics from UNC Chapel Hill.

COI

No conflicts of interest to declare.