This study unlike many others, which interview doctors or medical students,  aimed to understand job preferences of lower-skilled cadres such as community health workers, mid-skilled clinical care staff such as nurses and midwives, or non-patient facing staff who manage health facilities.

The study, authored by members of the IDEAS team, employed a discrete choice experiment to estimate which aspects of a job are most influential to health worker choices. A multinomial logistic regression model estimated the importance of six attributes to respondents: salary, training, workload, facility
quality, management and opportunities to improve patient outcomes.

Findings show that non-financial factors were important to respondents from
all three cadres: e.g., supportive management was the only attribute that influenced the job choices of non-patient-facing administrative and managerial staff. Training opportunities, supportive management and good facility quality were valued the most amongst health extension workers. Similarly, supportive management, good facility quality and training opportunities influenced the job choices of care providers the most. Earning an average salary also influenced the jobs choices health extension workers and care providers, which shows that a combination of financial and non-financial incentives should be considered to motivate health workers in Ethiopia.