4/6/2024 0 Comments Vignette rough draft example![]() APs watch or read vignettes depicting an interaction with a healthcare professional, and imagine themselves in the position of the patient. ‘Analogue patients’ (APs) are often used in healthcare communication studies. Manipulating one aspect of communication in isolation allows for greater standardisation compared with observational studies of real consultations. In experimental vignette studies, controlled modification of key variables (while keeping the remaining content of the vignettes constant) enables researchers to infer causal relationships. Responses reveal participants’ beliefs, attitudes, judgments, knowledge, or intended behaviours with respect to the vignette context. Hypothetical yet realistic scenarios are shown to participants, who are then invited to respond. A vignette is a “ short, carefully constructed description of a person, object, or situation, representing a systematic combination of characteristics”. Vignette studies provide a useful alternative. Moreover, observations do not allow for controlled manipulation of variables: they can explore correlations between communication behaviours and different outcomes measures, but they rarely explore causation. Observing sensitive or emotive communication may be logistically and ethically challenging. Observational studies of real doctor-patient interactions are not always feasible. Various approaches exist for the study of doctor-patient communication. Online methods may be harnessed to increase participant accessibility, but future research should explore more inclusive vignette design. Researchers creating video vignette studies can adapt the video vignette development process to suit time and budget constraints, and to make best use of available technology. We also suggest that existing research fails to critically examine the potential benefits and harms of online video vignette methodology, and propose that further research should consider how it can be adapted to be inclusive of those from underserved backgrounds. We thus propose that if care is taken in initial script development and if pragmatic choices are made regarding filming techniques and pilot-testing, researchers can produce valid vignettes within reasonable time and budget restraints. Our vignettes were filmed using an iPhone camera, and featured a physician rather than a professional actor nonetheless, pilot-testing found them to be internally and externally valid for experimental use. We demonstrate the usefulness of existing guidelines, while also determining that vignette production need not necessarily be expensive or time-consuming to be valid. Scripts were pilot-tested with 15 laypeople, and videos with 14 laypeople pilot-testing involved both quantitative and qualitative analysis. We followed established guidelines for vignette production, with specific consideration of how these might be applied pragmatically to save time and resources. We produced four video vignettes for use in an online study examining the communication of diagnostic uncertainty. We aim to provide practically useful recommendations for future researchers, and to prompt further reflection on accessibility issues in video vignette methodology. Here, we outline our methods in creating valid video vignettes to study the communication of diagnostic uncertainty. While published guidelines outline stages to create valid video vignette studies, constructing high quality vignettes which are accessible to a wide range of participants and feasible to produce within time and budget restraints remains challenging. ![]() Video vignettes – hypothetical yet realistic scenarios – offer advantages to traditional observational approaches by enabling standardisation and manipulation of a clinician-patient encounter for assessment by participants. ![]() Studying clinician-patient communication can be challenging, particularly when research seeks to explore cause-and-effect relationships.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |