Table 3.

Application of the pretesting guide to a DCE on IGG

Domain	Issues identified	Example survey modifications made	Impact
Content Relevance and comprehensiveness of the DCE	Participants indicated that they had difficulty understanding and connecting with each attribute and level	Attributes and levels were reframed to include a meaningful potential benefit not initially accounted for	Changing the framing of the attributes and levels promoted more genuine responses in the DCE
Presentation Visualization and formatting of the DCE	Participants had difficulty distinguishing between the DCE choice task profiles	Attribute levels were color coded in the DCE choice tasks	Response burden decreased and time spent on answering tasks decreased
Comprehension Understanding of the DCE	Participants had difficulty recalling key terms, presented through an educational video	Educational video explaining IGG and key terms was swapped for a simple text-based description with comprehension questions	Improved comprehension and recall of terms
Elicitation Process of making a choice in the choice task of the DCE	Some participants indicated they would “never support IGG” and that profiles were inconsistent with preferences	An opt-out was added to each choice task	Response burden decreased and willingness to complete tasks increased

DCE discrete-choice experiment, IGG investigative genetic genealogy