Eye tracking to explore attendance in health-state descriptions

Abstract

IntroductionA crucial assumption in health valuation methods is that respondents pay equal attention to all information components presented in the response task. So far, there is no solid evidence that respondents are fulfilling this condition. The aim of our study is to explore the attendance to various information cues presented in the discrete choice (DC) response tasks.MethodsEye tracking was used to study the eye movements and fixations on specific information areas. This was done for seven DC response tasks comprising health-state descriptions. A sample of 10 respondents participated in the study. Videos of their eye movements were recorded and are presented graphically. Frequencies were computed for length of fixation and number of fixations, so differences in attendance were demonstrated for particular attributes in the tasks.ResultsAll respondents completed the survey. Respondents were fixating on the left-sided health-state descriptions slightly longer than on the right-sided. Fatigue was not observed, as the time spent did not decrease in the final response tasks. The time spent on the tasks depended on the difficulty of the task and the amount of information presented.Discussion and conclusionEye tracking proved to be a feasible method to study the process of paying attention and fixating on health-state descriptions in the DC response tasks. Eye tracking facilitates the investigation of whether respondents fully read the information in health descriptions or whether they ignore particular elements.

Does attribute order influence attribute-information processing in discrete choice experiments?

“…The findings of Spinks and Mortimer (2016) suggest that ANA differs across alternatives, indicating possible left-right ordering effects. Selivanova and Krabbe (2018) confirm this, as the respondents in their study paid more visual attention to, i.e. fixated their eyes longer and more often on, alternatives presented on the left side.…”

“…Visual ANA is often found to be inconsistent with stated and inferred ANA measures (Balcombe et al, 2015;Van Loo et al, 2018). Grebitus et al (2015), Spinks and Mortimer (2016), Grebitus and Roosen (2018), and Selivanova and Krabbe (2018) show that higher choice task complexity increases visual ANA. The findings of Spinks and Mortimer (2016) suggest that ANA differs across alternatives, indicating possible left-right ordering effects.…”

“…A number of visual ANA studies suggest that the order in which attributes are presented in a choice task in a DCE may affect both respondents' choices and their level of attendance to an attribute (Balcombe et al, 2015;Spinks and Mortimer, 2016;Selivanova and Krabbe, 2018). However, formal tests of attribute-ordering effects are scarce.…”

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