A METHODICAL STUDY OF AN ANALYTIC HIERARCHY PROCESS (AHP) CONCERNING THE DEVELOPMENT OF A CENTRAL INFORMATION PLATFORM FOR RARE DISEASES IN GERMANY

Purpose:

This study was conducted as a part of the central information platform for rare disease project in Germany. Within this framework, this study wanted to examine the importance of health information for patients with rare diseases. Because there is a lack of research whether individual or group decisions are more suitable for using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), we performed both methods separately. The aim of this methodical part of our study was to compare the individual decisions with group decisions in the AHP method.

Method:

First, a qualitative pilot study identified the criteria and sub-criteria for the AHP with respect to the defined target. Using the determined items we designed a three-level hierarchy. Participants had to judge the importance of one criterion compared with another on a 9-point scale (1=equal importance of two criteria; 9=very strong importance of one criterion over the other). For the individual decision making, patients with a rare disease were interviewed (n=32) and their priorities were aggregated by geometric mean. The same AHP-questionnaire was used for the group discussion (3 groups). First, the group members judged the relative priorities of each comparison for themselves. Afterwards the individual judgments were displayed anonymously on a screen. The group members discussed each pairwise comparison and also got the opportunity to alter their judgements. Finally, the group reached a consensus for each comparison. Participants that answered consistently were included in the analyses.

Result:

On the one hand both methods lead to the same order of the criteria ranking. The most important criterion was medical questions. On the other hand individual decisions are more often inconsistent. Further we analyzed that the given answers of groups are in a smaller range than individual answers. Looking at group judgements, more than a half of the answers were between 1 (=equal important) and 3 (=moderate important).

Conclusion:

It was possible to show differences between individual and group decisions when using an AHP to examine the importance of health information about rare diseases. But both methods have their strengths and weaknesses. Although the ranking results did not differ, we cannot provide a recommendation for one of the methods. Due to the shown respective characteristics the choice of method should depend on the research question and sample characteristics.