A Delivery Service Index

Abstract

Drawing on social judgment theory for its theoretical underpinnings, this article presents a method for combining several descriptive indicators to yield an aggregated single summative index of the overall quality of the services received by clients in a service delivery system or program. The method described is based on the judgments of an evaluative panel and can be applied to a wide variety of populations and types of services. The delivery service index itself can be used as a dependent variable in analyses of variance or employed in correlational studies. GL ike description, judgment is a fundamental cognitive component of evaluation (Stake, 1967). Accordingly, one would expect to fmd a corresponding refinement of ways of representing the judgment process embedded in the general evaluative process; however, despite the use of elegant techniques for describing a program, the evaluator's primary model for providing quantitative indices of the impact of the program continues to focus on goal attainment (Schulberg and Baker, 1968).