Establishing and quantifying the preferences of mental health service users for day hospital care: a pilot study using conjoint analysis.

There are a number of different participatory and research based approaches to policy making and service delivery. These are discussed in brief, followed by a description of conjoint analysis (CA), which is a relatively new and alternative method of eliciting and quantifying preferences. An empirica...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of Mental Health Vol. 11; no. 1; pp. 85 - 97
Main Authors: Townend M, Shackley P
Format: questionnaire/scale research tables/charts Journal Article
Published: Taylor & Francis Ltd Feb2002
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
Description
Summary:There are a number of different participatory and research based approaches to policy making and service delivery. These are discussed in brief, followed by a description of conjoint analysis (CA), which is a relatively new and alternative method of eliciting and quantifying preferences. An empirical test of the feasibility of using CA to elicit the preferences of service users of day hospital services is presented. This clearly showed the applicability of CA to the mental health context by demonstrating that users of day hospital services have clear preferences between service attributes. The implications of this finding are discussed and suggestions made for future research.