Beyond Multiplication: Incorporating Importance Into Client Satisfaction Measures

Objective: This article brings the discussions on incorporating perceived importance across study areas into the study of client satisfaction and cautions the use of multiplicative scores (multiplying satisfaction and importance scores) as a weighting method. An alternative weighting method is provided. Method: Analyze data from a client satisfaction survey of 103 clients of a publicly funded elderly case management service unit located in a large U. S. Midwest region city. Results: The alternative weighted score correlated higher with all the global client satisfaction measures than the multiplicative score. Conclusion: Using multiplicative scores to represent global client satisfaction should be avoided. The proposed alternative weighting method is a reasonable way to incorporate perceived importance to represent global client satisfaction.