Assessing the Importance of Treatment Goals in Patients with Psoriasis: Analytic Hierarchy Process vs. Likert Scales.

Patients with psoriasis assign different importance to health dimensions and associated treatment goals. In choosing a method to assess the importance of health dimensions and/or treatment goals, it needs to be considered that resulting importance weights may differ in dependence on the used method. However, in this study, observed discrepancies in importance weights of the health dimensions were most likely caused by the different methodological approaches focusing on treatment goals to assess the importance of health dimensions on the one hand (Patient Needs Questionnaire) or directly assessing health dimensions on the other hand (analytic hierarchy process).