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