Elicitation of stated preferences pre-trial design
antiseizure, epilepsy
RECRUITMENT, EPILEPSY
A key lesson was that despite our pre-funding stakeholder engagement, we had failed to anticipate the scale of parental treatment preference against antiseizure medication (ASMs) randomisation. In future work, this should be considered. More detailed and robust work to ascertain patient preferences earlier in the trial design process might have identified likely barriers to recruitment and informed the design of the RCT at an earlier stage.As it became clear that low recruitment meant that the original trial design could not proceed, the consultation with clinicians and families conducted led us to recognise that trial designs with PPT elements were favoured by the clinicians, parents, and children with epilepsy. We propose that discrete choice experiments (DCEs) have potential in this regard. DCEs can elicit patients’ stated preferences for health technologies, interventions, and services [The design of a DCE requires formative work to identify suitable attributes and attribute levels [