Online Trial Examining Validity and Reliability of the Shared Decision Making Process Survey

Study staff worked with a national sampling firm to recruit subjects for five different medical decisions. The five decisions are (1) treatment of high cholesterol, (2) treatment of high blood pressure (3) when to start breast cancer screening (4) whether or not to have prostate cancer screening and (5) which test to have for colorectal cancer screening. Respondents complete a survey about their experiences talking with health care providers about the specific clinical decision. The survey measured the amount of shared decision making, knowledge, preferences, decisional conflict and decision regret. The study will obtain 500 responses total, or 100 for each decision.

Sample is an online non-probability panel of adults living in the United States. In the survey, participants were screened to meet specific qualifications. After 1 week, a random selection of 50 respondents are invited to complete the retest instrument.

All analyses will be conducted separately for each group, and results may be pooled across cancer screening and medication contexts. First, study staff will examine the descriptives for the Shared Decision Making Process items. Study staff will also test several hypotheses to examine validity of the scores such as whether higher shared decision making process scores are associated with less decisional conflict and less regret. Staff will also examine retest reliability of the Shared Decision Making Process scale.