HERU External Seminar - Dr Thao Thai

HERU External Seminar - Dr Thao Thai
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This past event was cancelled

Dr Thao Thai is a Research Fellow at the Monash University Health Economics Group (MUHEG) in the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine.

Seminar Title: The effect of emoji scale on preference inversion In discrete choice experiments (DECs) with duration.

Preference inversion often occurs in health valuation studies when respondent preferences do not align with the hierarchical order of attribute levels. We have developed a novel visual aid, called the emoji scale which consists of five Apple Unicode emoji characters, modelled after the five attribute levels of the health-related quality of life instrument where the presented level was represented by an enlarged emoji positioned within a scale of other smaller, colourless emojis to reflect the level order. We compare the effect of this visual aid as a compliment to text (i.e. emoji and text) with (a) the standard text-only choice tasks (i.e. without visual aid), (b) the emoji-only choice task (i.e without text), and (c) purple colour coding where the positive aspects are highlighted in light blue and negative aspects are highlighted in darker purple in facilitating respondent understanding of the ordering of attribute levels. A between-respondent comparison was conducted where each respondent was randomly allocated to one of four arms which presented one type of choice task presentation. Survey respondents consisted of 3000 Australians aged 18 and above. The analysis revealed that utility decrements derived from emoji and text choice tasks closely align with those obtained from text-only choice tasks. Generally, choice tasks incorporating visual aids (emoji and text, emoji only, and purple colour coding) yield higher utility decrements for the physical health dimension and lower utility decrements for the mental health dimension. The text-only choice tasks exhibit the highest prevalence of preference inversion, while emoji-and-text choice tasks demonstrate improved choice consistency, with fewer occurrences of heuristic behaviours compared to text-only and emoji-only choice tasks. Although further work is necessary to fully understand the legitimacy of the emoji scale as an effective visual aid for conveying attribute level ordering in DCEs, our findings suggest a promising avenue for  employing emoji&text choice tasks in health valuation studies.   

Speaker
Dr Thao Thai
Hosted by
Professor Marjon van der Pol
Venue
Polwarth Building Rm 3:052
Contact

Contact Dr Luis Loría Rebolledo for further details on attending the seminar.