TABLE 4.
RESULTS OF YEAR 2 WORKSHOP: ACUTE CHRONIC OBSTRUCTIVE PULMONARY DISEASE CARE
| Preworkshop Voting |
Final Workshop Voting |
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| Importance Ranks |
Normalized and Idealized Priorities |
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| 1 (Most Important) to 8 (Most Unimportant) |
Priority Scores Using AHP |
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| Topic | Acute COPD Care | Median Rank (IQR) | Median Normalized Priority | Normalized Priority IQR | Idealized Priority |
| 1 | Implementation of COPD exacerbation checklist | 4 (2–6) | 0.22 | (0.12–0.26) | 1.00 (reference) |
| 2 | Comorbid conditions in the acute setting | 3 (2–5) | 0.20 | (0.06–0.36) | 0.95 |
| 3 | Effectiveness and implementation of NIV in acute respiratory failure | 4 (2–5) | 0.17 | (0.07–0.25) | 0.80 |
| 4 | Role of antibiotics in acute exacerbations | 4 (3–6) | 0.14 | (0.06–0.14) | 0.63 |
| 5 | Quality of care assessment | 4 (2–6) | 0.12 | (0.04–0.19) | 0.57 |
| 6 | Dyspnea in COPD | 5 (3–6) | 0.07 | (0.03–0.08) | 0.31 |
| 7 | Oxygen therapy post exacerbation | 7 (4–8) | 0.04 | (0.02–0.04) | 0.19 |
| 8 | Interventions for acute airway obstruction | 6 (4–7) | 0.04 | (0.02–0.04) | 0.18 |
Definition of abbreviations: AHP = analytic hierarchy process; COPD = chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; IQR = interquartile range; NIV = noninvasive ventilation.
There were 42 participating stakeholder organizations in the workshop; individual participants are listed in Table 1. Wide IQRs suggest variation in stakeholder preferences. Preferences in the preworkshop voting were expressed as importance ranks, whereas AHP was used to develop normalized and idealized priorities in the final voting. AHP was used in an attempt to quantify the level of separation in importance across ranked topics. The normalized priorities represent the proportion of the total importance across all topics that voters ascribe to a particular research topic. The ratio of normalized priorities for any two topics indicates their relative importance (idealized priority). Thus, the AHP approach ranks topics from most important to least important, but the process also offers the advantage of quantifying the separation between any two options (e.g., how much more important is the most highly ranked topic compared to any other topic).