From Qualitative Research to Quantitative Preference Elicitation: An Example in Invasive Meningococcal Disease

Qualitative research is fundamental for designing discrete choice experiments (DCEs) but is often underreported in the preference literature. We developed a DCE to elicit preferences for vaccination against invasive meningococcal disease (IMD) among adolescents and young people (AYP) and parents and legal guardians (PLG) in the United States. This article reports the targeted literature review and qualitative interviews that informed the DCE design and demonstrates how to apply the recent reporting guidelines for qualitative developmental work in preference studies. This study included two parts: a targeted literature review and qualitative interviews. The Medline and Embase databases were searched for quantitative and qualitative studies on IMD and immunization. The results of the targeted literature review informed a qualitative interview guide. Sixty-minute, online, semi-structured interviews with AYP and PLG were used to identify themes related to willingness to be vaccinated against IMD. Participants were recruited through a third-party recruiter’s database and commercial online panels. Interviews included vignettes about IMD and vaccinations and three thresholding exercises examining the effect of incidence rate, disability rate, and fatality rate on vaccination preferences. Participant responses related to the themes were counted. The targeted literature review identified 31 concepts that were synthesized into six topics for the qualitative interviews. Twenty AYP aged 16–23 years and 20 PLG of adolescents aged 11–17 years were interviewed. Four themes related to willingness to be vaccinated emerged: attitudes towards vaccination, knowledge and information, perception of IMD, and vaccine attributes. Most participants were concerned about IMD (AYP 60