Importance-Satisfaction Analysis
Overview
Today, city officials have limited resources which need to be
targeted to activities that are of the most benefit to their
citizens. Two of the most important criteria for decision
making are (1) to target resources toward services of the
highest importance to citizens; and (2) to target resources
toward those services where citizens are the least satisfied.
“You can look at that one slide (Importance-Satisfaction slide) and in
a few minutes figure out what priorities you need to set for your organization. We used that information
in many of our activities that were designed to
better our organization.”
~Frank Reeb
Director of Administrative Services for the
City of Lawrence, KS
The Importance-Satisfaction (IS) rating is a unique tool that
allows public officials to better understand both of these
highly important decision making criteria for each of the
services they are providing. The Importance-Satisfaction
rating is based on the concept that cities will maximize overall
citizen satisfaction by emphasizing improvements in those
service categories where the level of satisfaction is relatively
low and the perceived importance of the service is relatively
high.
Methodology
The rating is calculated by summing the percentage of
responses for items selected as the first, second, and third
most important services for the City to emphasize over the
next two years. This sum is then multiplied by 1 minus the
percentage of respondents that indicated they were positively
satisfied with the City's performance in the related area
(the sum of the ratings of 4 and 5 on a 5-point scale excluding
“don't knows”). “Don't know” responses are excluded from
the calculation to ensure that the satisfaction ratings among
service categories are comparable.
[IS=Importance x (1-Satisfaction)].
Example of the Calculation. Respondents were asked to
identify the major categories of maintenance services they
thought should receive the most emphasis over the next two
years. Twenty-six percent (26%) ranked the adequacy of
City street lighting as the third most important maintenance
service to emphasize over the next two years.
With regard to satisfaction, the adequacy of City street
lighting was ranked fourth overall with 48% rating the
adequacy of City street lighting as a “4" or a “5" on a 5-point
scale excluding “Don't know” responses. The I-S rating for
the adequacy of City street lighting was calculated by
multiplying the sum of the most important percentages by 1
minus the sum of the satisfaction percentages. In this
example, 26% was multiplied by 52% (1-0.48). This
calculation yielded an I-S rating of 0.1352, which was
ranked third out of six maintenance service categories.
The maximum rating is 1.00 and would be achieved when
100% of the respondents select an activity as one of their
top choices to emphasize over the next two years and 0%
indicated that they are positively satisfied with the delivery
of the service.
The lowest rating is 0.00 and could be achieved under either
one of the following two situations:
- if 100% of the respondents were positively satisfied with
the delivery of the service
-
if none (0%) of the respondents selected the service as one of the three most
important areas for the City to emphasize over the next two years.
Interpreting the Ratings
Ratings that are greater than or equal to 0.20 identify areas that should receive significantly more emphasis over the next two years. Ratings from .10 to .20 identify service areas that should receive increased emphasis. Ratings less than .10 should continue to receive the current level of emphasis.
- Definitely Increase Emphasis (IS>=0.20)
- Increase Current Emphasis (0.10<=IS<0.20)
- Maintain Current Emphasis (IS<0.10)
An example importance-satisfaction results for each overall service area are shown below.
