Increasing the Validity of Client Satisfaction Surveys

对心理健康服务的满意度评估很重要，因为它提供了与消费者对治疗过程的主观体验有关的独特信息。然而，在衡量客户满意度方面存在一些问题。客户通常报告对各种治疗方式的高满意度，这导致了天花板效应、范围限制和非正态分布。报告的客户满意度普遍较高，威胁到现有工具的与标准相关的有效性和结构有效性。这项研究的目的是开发一种方法，可以改善客户满意度的评估，导致更有效的数据。将评估开放式问题和排名程序对客户满意度问卷-8(CSQ-8)项目评分的影响。排名和开放式问题可能有助于更好地处理与治疗有关的问题，导致在完成满意度调查时对项目进行更大的歧视。精神健康客户(N=180)将在四种情况中的一种情况下完成CSQ-8。第一组将根据重要性对CSQ-8上的项目进行排名，然后使用标准说明对CSQ-8进行评分。第二组将对CSQ-8项目进行评分，然后提供排名。第三组将被问到一系列关于他们治疗经验的开放式问题，然后使用标准说明完成CSQ-8的评级。第四组将首先根据标准说明完成CSQ-8，然后回答开放式问题。所有参与者还将完成症状测量(BSI-18)和客户感知结果的测量。假设L组和第三组的平均满意度得分将显著低于第二组和第四组。也就是说，无论是排名任务还是开放式问题都会导致CSQ-8的得分更低，分布更正态。此外，据预测，这种新的方法将导致满意度和标准变量(自我感觉到的症状和结果)之间更强的关联。提高客户满意度量表的有效性可能会为心理健康提供者提供关于服务的更准确信息，这些信息可用于项目修改。这些修改可能会导致更好地满足客户的需求，并增加客户在治疗中的持久性。

The assessment of satisfaction with mental health services is important because it provides unique information pertaining to consumers' subjective experience of the treatment process. However, there are problems related to the measurement of client satisfaction. Clients generally report high levels of satisfaction with a variety of treatments modalities, and this leads to ceiling effects, a restriction of range, and non-normal distributions. Uniformly high levels of reported client satisfaction threatens the criterion-related and construct validity of the available instruments. The purpose of this research is to develop a methodology that can improve the assessment of client satisfaction, leading to more valid data. The effects of open-ended questions and ranking procedures on ratings provided on the Client Satisfaction Questionnaire-8 (CSQ-8) items will be assessed. Rankings and open- ended questions may facilitate greater processing of issues related to treatment, leading to greater discrimination among items when completing the satisfaction surveys. Mental health clients (N =180) will complete the CSQ-8 in one of four conditions. Group 1 will rank the items on the CSQ-8 in terms of importance and then provide rating on the CSQ-8 using standard instructions. Group 2 will rate CSQ-8 items and then provide rankings. Group 3 will be asked a series of open-ended questions regarding their treatment experience and then complete ratings of the CSQ-8 using standard instructions. Group 4 will first complete the CSQ-8 under standard instructions and then respond to the open-ended questions. All participants will also complete a symptom measure (BSI- 18) and a measure of client-perceived outcome. It is hypothesized that the mean satisfaction scores of Groups l and 3 will be significantly lower than those in Groups 2 and 4. That is, both the ranking task and the open- end questions will result in lower CSQ-8 scores and a more normal distribution. Additionally, it is predicted that this new methodology will result in a stronger association between satisfaction and criterion variables (self-perceived symptoms and outcome). Improving the validity of client satisfaction scales may give mental health providers more accurate information about services which can be used for program modifications. These modifications may result in better meeting the needs of clients and increasing client persistence in treatment.