Stanton R. Mehr, President, SM Health Communications LLC
This question frequently comes up in discussions of projects
that are already underway. In the process of creating the survey tool, research
sponsors want the most direct, unambiguous response they can get to their critical
questions.
In the vast majority of instances, it is possible to meet this need
based not only on how the question is asked but on which format is chosen. For
example, in-depth telephone interviews have the ability to both clarify and
confuse: having the ability to “drill down” into an answer helps to clarify,
but the interviewee may raise personal conflicting perspectives in a long and
winding response. Multiple choice survey questions can also restrict variance
in response, as long as the choices are worded well and account for all
possible responses.
There are, however, some research questions that really
cannot be answered by payers. We cannot expect a medical director to recall individual
patients who have a particular condition who are being treated in a certain way,
unless they happened to review an identical case just the other day. Asking
them to provide information that may violate HIPAA would of course be
prohibited. Questions regarding strategic directions of a plan or payer may be
proprietary or as is often the case, needs to be targeted to a C-suite level
survey sample.
In many cases, payer responses to a particular question will
vary considerably, based on plan type, geographic location, and often by whether
they serve a commercial (or even individual, exchange, or small/large groups),
Medicare, or Medicaid populations. For these projects, it is often possible to
lay out unambiguous responses for each payer segment, if the research sample is
sufficiently large.
I’ve found that nearly all market research questions are
answerable. Removing ambiguity in those responses (involving estimating
probabilities and cautious interpretation of results) is a subject for future
discussion. This can be best answered through the use of one of several format
choices: in-depth telephone surveys, Web-based surveys, the use of on-line
communities, or employing scenario-based research, like mock P&T
Committees.
