During this initial item generation phase of this research project, we are interested in interviewing people who manage waitlists to discover what waitlist management strategies you currently use in your mental health service in the UK, and how you could vary the way you manage your waitlist to accommodate clients’ waitlist preferences. Examples of waitlist management strategies that clients may prefer include waitlist review calls or waitlist status updates via SMS.

The purpose of the interview is not to establish what you consider to be good waitlist management practice. Instead, we want to hear how you vary or could vary your waitlist to create dimensions where either end of the dichotomy might be preferable to clients. For example, a regular versus an infrequent contact waitlist option. Clients could then use the waitlist preference measure to articulate the strength of their preference in any direction along this spectrum, similar to the C-NIP.

Furthermore, we would like to understand what information you consider essential for effectively assessing and accommodating clients’ waitlist preferences, as well as any challenges you anticipate based on your experience.
 
The insights from the interviews with people who manage waitlists, combined with relevant pre-existing literature, will assist in creating a pool of potential items for the client waitlist preference measure. These potential items will undergo further testing in the subsequent phases before the measure is finalised. 

The research findings from this study may be published in academic journals or shared through presentations, blog posts, and other publications. Any personally identifiable information will be removed.