An alternative approach to create and deploy discrete choice experiments

Discrete Choice Experiments (DCEs) are widely used in behavioral sciences to examine how humans value attributes of a technology, how those values drive decisions, and how they make trade-offs. The method has increasingly been used to inform technologies and interventions for addressing critical issues (e.g. disease and hunger). Different formats and symbols are used to deliver DCEs and represent attributes, respectively (e.g. questionnaire presenting two vaccines with different photos representing risks). When these formats or symbols are unfamiliar to respondents, they are unlikely to understand DCEs, raising questions about the validity of findings and their contribution to future technology and interventions. This research note offers a pathway to develop more robust DCEs with participants. In doing so, participant understanding of the experiment is increased and more accurate depictions of their choices are captured.