Using Conjoint Analysis to Predict Teachers’ Preferences for Intervention Intensity

Teachers play an important role in improving the emotional and behavioral problems of students. Intervention characteristics (e.g., frequency of student intervention) and teacher characteristics (e.g., mental health literacy) may influence teacher preferences for an intervention and impact service uptake. Conjoint analysis, a trade-off technique borrowed from marketing research, can authentically assess preferences by quantifying the compromises respondents make when selecting a product or a service and has been used to measure service preferences in the mental health field. A conjoint analysis technique called a “discrete choice experiment” was used to systematically arrange intervention components and subcomponents to assess teachers’ preferences for the intensity of three common intervention attributes (i.e., frequency of student intervention, frequency of teacher consultation, and level of parental involvement). The sample consisted of 229 elementary school teachers recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Simulation analyses estimated teachers’ preferences for a low-intensity intervention, medium-intensity intervention, high-intensity intervention or none of these. Differences in teacher characteristics (i.e., beliefs, mental health literacy, stress) were examined between teachers preferring each type of intensity. Results indicated that preferences for intervention intensity varied, with more teachers preferring a medium-intensity intervention than any other intervention. Mental health literacy was significantly greater among teachers preferring a medium-intensity intervention than teachers preferring no intervention. Interventions consisting of weekly options for teacher consultation and parental involvement may appeal to teachers with strong mental health literacy.