Table 1.

Overview of methods under evaluation in this study

	CE Interviews	Social Media Review	GCM
Type of data collected	Qualitative	Qualitative	Qualitative and quantitative
Design of data collection method	Primary, prospective	Secondary, retrospectivea	Primary, prospective
Depth of data collected	Deep, rich	Varies depending on platform	Shallow
Breadth of data collected	Specific to study aims	Broad	Narrow
Ability to probe and explore new areas of interest	High - interviewer interacts with subject, facilitates discussion and probes around key areas of interest	Medium - dependent on existing data. If discussion not present in SM thread, cannot probe further	Low – only pose one or two questions (or prompts) and responses are dependent on the quality of the prompt and the instructions to subjects
Availability of clinical/background data	High – although depends on recruitment approach	Low	High – although depends on recruitment approach
Ability to confirm diagnosis	High – although depends on recruitment approach	Medium (typically self-confirmed diagnosis only)	High – although depends on recruitment approach
Level of burden on subjects	High	Low	Low
Level of burden on researcher	High	Low	Medium
Time and cost burden	High	Low	Low
Scientific acceptance/ best practice	High	Low	Mixed (widely applied in other fields but less so for outcomes research)
Regulatory support	High	Mixed (depends on purpose of research)	Mixed (broadly supportive of mixed methods approaches that utilize online technologies)

CE concept elicitation, GCM group concept mapping

^aA social media review may also be performed prospectively but for the current study a retrospective approach was employed