Measuring What Matters Most: Discrete Choice Experiments for Eliciting Preferences in Medicine and Global Health
Health systems strive to put people at the center of care, but doing so requires understanding what communities, patients, providers, and decision makers value. Discrete choice experiments (DCEs) are increasingly used for measuring these preferences by asking people to engage in trade-offs when making decisions. By revealing what matters most to different groups, DCEs can inform the design of interventions and strategies that are more acceptable, feasible, and likely to succeed.
This three-half-day short course provides a practical, hands-on introduction to DCEs. Through lectures, applied examples, and hands-on exercises using Sawtooth and Qualtrics/Stata, alongside artificial intelligence-based approaches to support the design and analysis process, participants will gain practical experience with each stage of DCE implementation, from developing attributes and levels, to operationalizing the study, to analyzing choice data. By the end of the course, participants will have the foundation to design, conduct, and evaluate a DCE from start to finish.
Audience
The course is designed for researchers, clinicians, and policymakers working in medicine and global health.
While prior exposure to DCE methods is helpful, no prior training or experience with preference methods or the software is required. Participants are encouraged to bring on-going work or an area of focus to apply core concepts during hands-on exercises. If participants do not have an ongoing or future project identified, course leaders will provide sample cases to workshop the foundational concepts and activities covered in the course.
Dates & Registration
The 2026 inaugural course will be held live online:
- Friday, Monday, Tuesday: June 12, 15 and 16, 2026
- 8:00 am - 12:00 pm Pacific Daylight Time (PDT, UTC-7)
Registration will open by May 4.
The registration deadline is Tuesday, June 2, 2026.
Please sign up at the bottom of this page to receive announcements.
Format
The course combines:
- Interactive didactic sessions
- Real-time applied exercises
- Dedicated time to develop your own project ideas
- Small group discussion
- Personalized feedback on the application of concepts to one’s work
All sessions are held via Zoom. The schedule follows Pacific Daylight Time (GMT-7).
Course Content
Major content areas covered by this course include:
- An overview of preference elicitation methods—such as best-worst scaling and time trade-off
- Didactic instruction in basic design, execution, and analysis of DCE experiments
- Applied examples and hands-on exercises using Sawtooth and Qualtrics/Stata
- Artificial intelligence-based approaches to support the design and analysis process
Costs
Graduate students & residents
- $500 (UCSF affiliates)
- $750 (Non-UCSF)
Postdoctoral scholars
- $1,000 (UCSF affiliates)
- $1,250 (Non-UCSF)
Participants residing in LMICs or areas of ongoing armed conflict
- $1,250
All others
- $1,500 (UCSF affiliates)
- $1,750 (Non-UCSF)
Applicants will be asked to provide proof of trainee or postdoctoral status.
Affiliation is defined as concurrent enrollment in a UCSF-sponsored residency or postdoctoral fellowship program; registered student status in a UCSF professional school or graduate program; or salaried UCSF faculty, academic, or staff appointment.
Cancellation Policy
Cancellations received in writing before Wednesday, April 15, 2026 will be refunded.
No refunds will be issued for cancellations received after that date.
Faculty
Co-Course Director
Andrew Kerkhoff, MD, PhD, MSc is a physician-scientist and an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of HIV, Infectious Diseases, and Global Medicine at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital (ZSFG). With nearly 15 years of experience in clinical TB and HIV research in the US, Africa, and Asia, Dr. Kerkhoff’s work applies implementation science methods to improve individual- and population-level outcomes across the TB and HIV care cascades through person-centered and equity-focused approaches. His research particularly focuses on (1) the development and implementation of novel TB diagnosis and case-finding tools and strategies, and (2) implementation readiness in high-burden countries for new TB vaccines targeting adults and adolescents. Dr. Kerkhoff serves as the Associate Program Director for Curriculum for the UCSF Implementation Science Training Program, where he co-directs the Introduction to Implementation Science Course and he also co-directs the UCSF CFAR Implementation Science Interest Group. He brings hands-on DCE and best-worst scaling experience from research studies conducted among diverse stakeholders across ten countries, covering TB and HIV prevention, diagnosis, and treatment.
Co-Course Director
Tracy Kuo Lin, PhD is an Associate Professor of Health Economics in the Institute for Health & Aging, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, in the School of Nursing at UCSF. She is a health economist and social scientist whose work leverages frameworks and methodologies in economics, decision science, political science, medicine, economics, and network science. Her research examines structural factors that impact a) health system financing and resource allocation, b) care processes, and c) patient burden and healthcare disparities – domestically and internationally. She is especially interested in evaluating and innovating solutions to ameliorate challenges faced by health systems in conflict-affected, fragile, and low-resource settings. Currently, she is conducting studies to understand how violence affects healthcare-seeking behavior and utilization, and exacerbates health disparities, in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt) and separately in rural Mail. Clinically, her research has directly informed the implementation of evidence-based policies, hospital regulations, and clinical decision support at UCSF. Dr. Lin works closely with non-governmental and international organizations, such as the World Bank, to conduct cost-effectiveness analyses, health workforce projections, and translate research evidence into health policies in countries such as Libya, Mali, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. Dr. Lin is also the co-director of the Health Economics and Policy Planning (HEPoP) Lab.
Accessibility
UCSF welcomes everyone, including people with disabilities, to our events. To request reasonable accommodations for this online event, please contact Laura Branagan by emailing [email protected] as soon as possible.
Disclosures and Accreditation
All faculty and administrative participants have stated they have no financial relationships to disclose.