The Use of Stated Preference Methods in melanoma - scoping review protocol

Stated preference (SP) studies are increasingly being used in health care to elicit patient preferences and inform patient-centered care and guidelines. SP studies ask patients to state their preferences directly through methods like discrete choice experiments, best-worst scaling, conjoint analysis, and others. These methods describe, explain, and predict patient choices and trade-offs between treatment options. SP studies in health care have grown over the past 10-15 years to help understand what matters most to patients and inform health economic decisions.

In melanoma care specifically, understanding patient preferences through SP studies could help tailor treatment recommendations and guidelines. By elucidating trade-offs patients make between different melanoma treatment attributes, care could be better aligned with patient values. However, it is unclear what SP research has been conducted in melanoma. Given the growth of SP studies in health care and their potential to improve patient-centered melanoma care, there is a need to map the existing literature.

A scoping review methodology is well suited to mapping the extent and nature of SP research across this broad topic. Scoping reviews allow for the inclusion of diverse study designs to examine the extent of research activity, identify gaps, summarize findings, and inform guideline development. This scoping review will identify and describe the available SP literature related to melanoma patient preferences and treatment decisions. The review will clarify where further SP research is needed and inform patient-centered melanoma treatment recommendations.