Measurement of Client Satisfaction in Women Infants and Children (WIC) Clinics

Client satisfaction is an important outcome of many public health programs. Client satisfaction literature suggests few psychometrically sound measures are available for usage with women participating in WIC Supplemental Food Programs. The purpose of proposed presentation is to outline an instrument development procedure that was recently completed with WIC clients in the Southwestern United States as part of an ongoing evaluation of a childhood obesity prevention project with WIC clinics. The proposed presentation will discuss and elaborate upon two principle measurement concepts, reliability and validity, using the recently developed satisfaction instrument as an illustration.

Scores on a satisfaction survey should maintain rank order across measurement occasions. Testing and retesting individuals often is done to assess the reliability of participants' scores. However, requiring two measurement points is often uneconomical or impossible in a public health setting. Other methods of assessing reliability that are applicable to single-administration circumstances are often used (e.g., Cronbach's α). The presentation will provide participants with information on how to develop a reliable scale using α and associated statistics. Validity is associated with the appropriateness of proposed score-based inferences. Since many constructs of interest are latent (e.g., satisfaction, self-efficacy, etc.) it is imperative that evidence be collected supporting the proposed uses of a measure. Otherwise, poor decisions could be made. Therefore, many forms of evidence are collected over the life of a psychological measure. In the presentation, use of factor analysis as validity evidence will be illustrated and discussed.