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

Abstract

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.