FS14 Update Report - Review of the Literature on AT Satisfaction Measurement
(Updated June 18, 2003)
This field scan investigates issues related to user satisfaction of assistive technology devices or health care services. A comprehensive literature review drew from the work on satisfaction in the fields of medicine, nursing, rehabilitation, health care, management and business. Publication dates of articles span 1981 through 2002.
Products assessed for satisfaction in the identified articles included health care services, health care products and assistive technology devices. The purposes of the reviewed articles were classified into the following categories: How to assess satisfaction, how good is satisfaction, how to develop better satisfaction surveys or questionnaires, assessment of the psychometric properties of satisfaction tools and outcomes of satisfaction assessment.
Conclusions include:
- Substantial literature related to measurement of satisfaction and measurement issues related to satisfaction is present across many disciplines.
- Different disciplines assess satisfaction using different measurement tools, but there are no standard satisfaction assessments used in all of these professions.
- Researchers have focused on surveys to measure satisfaction but there are not any tools that measure dissatisfaction. Are satisfaction and dissatisfaction two exclusively distinct concepts or do they lie on a continuum?
- It is important to address reliability and validity issues related to satisfaction in order to construct better satisfaction assessment tools.
- Survey design, administration techniques and the timing of the survey
need to be addressed as they impact satisfaction survey results.