Statistical analysis
IBM SPSS version 25.0 for Windows was used for our analysis and we used the Shapiro–Wilk test to evaluate the distribution of the data. Data are presented as mean ± standard deviation (SD) or median (with interquartile range) for normally distributed or skewed data, respectively (baseline characteristics like age, time till diagnose etc.). We used Student’s t-test for normally distributed data (surgical fear questionnaire). For the ranking exercise we calculated the mean and standard deviation, and ranked form low (ranked most important) to high (least important). We considered a 2-tailed p-value of < 0.05 as statistically significant.
For the DCE analysis we used Nlogit software version 6. Data were analyzed using a multinomial regression model. This model has the following regression equation