The exercise first had participants decide which hypothetical patient profiles met their evaluation criteria; it then showed them two final profiles and asked which was the more severe case. Survey length depended on the consistency of participants’ responses, with those lacking consistency being given more tasks to complete, Dr. Siegel and his colleagues reported.
Respondents completed the exercise three times: first independently without discussion, then after discussion in a group setting with an automated response system, and finally, independently following group discussion.
Disease severity indexes were created on a 100-point scale, and average part-worth utility scores were used to determine minimum and maximum scores for each attribute, with zero representing the absence of a symptom.