BACKGROUND: Culturally-specific services are central to efforts to improve the health of Aboriginal Australians. Few empirical studies have demonstrated the value of such services relative to mainstream alternatives.
OBJECTIVE: To assess the preferences and willingness to pay (WTP) of participants for attending a class and the relative importance of transport, cost and cultural-appropriateness in the choices made by participants.
DESIGN: A discrete choice experiment (DCE) was conducted alongside a study of a culturally-specific fall-prevention service. Attributes that were assessed were out-of-pocket costs, whether transport was provided and whether the class was Aboriginal-specific. Choices of participants were modelled using panel-mixed logit methods.
RESULTS: 60 patients completed the DCE. Attending a service was strongly preferred over no service (selected 99% of the time). Assuming equivalent efficacy of fall-prevention programs, participants indicated a preference for services that were culturally-specific (OR 1.25 95% CI: 1.00-1.55) and incurred lower out-of-pocket participant costs (OR 1.19 95% CI 1.11-1.27). The provision of transport did not have a statistically significant influence on service choice (p = 0.57).
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS: This represents the first published DCE in the health field examining preferences amongst an Aboriginal population. The results empirically demonstrate the value of the culturally-specific element of a program has to this cohort and the potential that stated-preference methods can have in incorporating the preferences of Aboriginal Australians and valuing cultural components of health services. NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY: As the majority of the NSW Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population is Aboriginal (97.2%), this population will be referred to as 'Aboriginal' in this manuscript.