OBJECTIVES: Prenatal and new born screening have benefited from improvements in technology allowing earlier diagnosis and intervention for an increasing number of conditions. However, changes in technology alter the benefits and risks of participation. Quantifying preferences for screening may help decision-makers understand demand (and its drivers) and the extent of heterogeneity in a population. This study aimed to identify studies eliciting and quantifying stated preferences for prenatal and new born screening programmes to provide an overview of key methods and findings.
METHODS: Electronic databases were searched for key terms relating to discrete choice experiments (DCEs) or best-worst-scaling (BWS) and prenatal/new born testing/screening. Data from included studies were systematically extracted, tabulated and summarised in a narrative review.
RESULTS: Fifteen DCEs and no BWS studies were identified in prenatal (n=13; 87%) and newborn screening (n=2; 13%). Most of the DCEs were conducted in Europe (n=9; 60%) but there were some examples from North America (n=1; 7%), Australia (n=2; 13%) and Asia (n=2; 13%). Commonly occurring attributes included accuracy of screening (n=12; 80%); when screening occurred (n=10; 67%); and type of information (n=9; 60%). Pregnant women (n=10; 67%) and healthcare professionals (n=8; 53%) were the most common samples. Eight studies (53%) compared preferences across different samples, and two studies (13%) made comparisons between countries. Details of the experimental design were unreported in 20% (n=3) studies. Most studies analysed choice data with conditional logit models (n=9; 60%). Only one study investigated preference heterogeneity with latent class analysis.
CONCLUSIONS: There is an existing literature of identifying stated preferences for antenatal and neonatal screening but the incorporation of more sophisticated design and analytical methods to investigate preference heterogeneity could extend the relevance of the findings to inform commissioning of new screening programmes.
