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Women's and healthcare professionals' preferences for prenatal testing: a discrete choice experiment
Author(s) -
Beulen Lean,
Grutters Janneke P. C.,
Faas Brigitte H. W.,
Feenstra Ilse,
Groenewoud Hans,
Vugt John M. G.,
Bekker Mireille N.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
prenatal diagnosis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.956
H-Index - 97
eISSN - 1097-0223
pISSN - 0197-3851
DOI - 10.1002/pd.4571
Subject(s) - miscarriage , medicine , health professionals , test (biology) , health care , obstetrics , family medicine , pregnancy , prenatal screening , gestational age , prenatal care , prenatal diagnosis , fetus , environmental health , paleontology , population , genetics , economics , biology , economic growth
Objective This study evaluates pregnant women's and healthcare professionals' preferences regarding specific prenatal screening and diagnostic test characteristics. Method A discrete choice experiment was developed to assess preferences for prenatal tests that differed in seven attributes: minimal gestational age, time to test results, level of information, detection rate, false positive rate, miscarriage risk and costs. Results The questionnaire was completed by 596 (70.2%) pregnant women and 297 (51.7%) healthcare professionals, of whom 507 (85.1%) and 283 (95.3%), respectively, were included in further analyses as their choice behavior indicated prenatal testing was an option to them. Comparison of results showed differences in relative importance attached to attributes, further reflected by differences in willingness to trade between attributes. Pregnant women are willing to accept a less accurate test to obtain more information on fetal chromosomal status or to exclude the risk of procedure‐related miscarriage. Healthcare professionals consider level of information and miscarriage risk to be most important as well but put more emphasis on timing and accuracy. Conclusion Pregnant women and healthcare professionals differ significantly in their preferences regarding prenatal test characteristics. Healthcare professionals should take these differences into consideration when counseling pregnant women on prenatal testing. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.