Developing a Discrete Choice Experiment Questionnaire to Design Health Policy Interventions for Rural Retention of...

Area of Science:

• Health Policy
• Rural Healthcare
• Medical Workforce Planning

Background:

• Specialist physician deficiency in Indian rural healthcare is critical.
• Understanding physician preferences is key to policy interventions.
• Addressing vacancies requires understanding retention factors.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a questionnaire for assessing specialist physicians' preferences for rural postings.
• To utilize a discrete choice experiment (DCE) for preference assessment.
• To inform health policy for rural physician retention.

Main Methods:

• Employed discrete choice experiment (DCE), a quantitative preference assessment method.
• Developed a DCE questionnaire by creating choice sets using experimental designs.
• Utilized a pairwise design for generating 90 unique choice sets across six blocks.

Main Results:

• Generated 90 unique choice sets representing hypothetical job scenarios.
• Each of the six blocks contained 15 distinct choice sets.
• Administered six versions of the DCE questionnaire to participants.

Conclusions:

• Outlined the creation of a DCE questionnaire for rural Rajasthan specialist preferences.
• Described experimental designs and choice set development for questionnaire formulation.
• Aimed to guide researchers and practitioners in DCE questionnaire design.