Cover: Best-worst Scaling Vs. Discrete Choice Experiments

Best-worst Scaling Vs. Discrete Choice Experiments

An Empirical Comparison Using Social Care Data

Published In: Social Science & Medicine Vol. 72, no. 10, May 2011, p. 1717-1727

Posted on RAND.org on May 01, 2011

by Dimitris Potoglou, Peter Burge, Terry Flynn, Anne Netten, Juliette Malley, Julien Forder, John E. Brazier

This paper presents empirical findings from the comparison between two principal preference elicitation techniques: discrete choice experiments and profile-based best-worst scaling. Best-worst scaling involves less cognitive burden for respondents and provides more information than traditional "pick-one" tasks asked in discrete choice experiments. However, there is lack of empirical evidence on how best-worst scaling compares to discrete choice experiments. This empirical comparison between discrete choice experiments and best-worst scaling was undertaken as part of the Outcomes of Social Care for Adults project, England, which aims to develop a weighted measure of social care outcomes. The findings show that preference weights from best-worst scaling and discrete choice experiments do reveal similar patterns in preferences and in the majority of cases preference weights—when normalised/rescaled—are not significantly different.

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