The Influence of Treatment Effect Size on Willingness to Adopt a Therapy

Background. Physicians are slow to adopt novel thera-pies, and the reasons for this are poorly understood. The authors sought to determine if the size of the treat-ment effect of a novel therapy influences willingness to adopt it. Methods. We developed 2 experimental vignette pairs describing a trial of a therapy for a hypo-thetical disease that showed a statistically significant mortality benefit. The size of the mortality effect was varied in vignettes of a pair (3 % v. 10%). The 2 experi-mental vignette pairs differed in whether study enroll-ment was reported. Vignettes were mailed to a random sample of physicians using an intersubject design. The main study outcome was respondents ’ willingness to adopt the hypothetical therapy, based on the results of the hypothetical trial. Results. There were 124 an