Consumer satisfaction and item response theory: creating a measurement scale

• Autor(a) principal: Bortolotti,Silvana Ligia Vincenzi
• Data de Publicação: 2012
• Outros Autores: Moreira Junior,Fernando de Jesus, Bornia,Antonio Cezar, Sousa Júnior,Afonso Farias de, Andrade,Dalton Francisco de
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Gestão & Produção
• Texto Completo: http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0104-530X2012000200005
• topic: management; measurement of satisfaction; item response theory; deecision making

Today, people have increasingly demanded more from the state and enterprises. Consumer satisfaction is not an organizational option, but rather a matter of survival for any institution. The quest for measurement of consumer satisfaction has been ongoing in many areas of research, and researchers have concentrated efforts to demonstrate the psychometric quality of their measurements. However, the techniques employed by these commitments have not kept pace with the advances in psychometric theory and methods. The Item Response Theory (IRT) is an approach used for assessing latent trait. It is commonly used in educational and psychological tests and provides additional information beyond that obtained from classic psychometric techniques. This article presents a model of cumulative application of item response theory to measure the extent of students' satisfaction with their courses by creating a measurement scale. The Graded Response Model was used. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of this theory in measuring satisfaction since it places both items as individuals on the same scale. This theory may be valuable in the evaluation of customer satisfaction and many other organizational phenomena. The findings may help the decision maker of an enterprise with the correction of flows, processes, and procedures, and, consequently, it may help generate increased efficiency and effectiveness in daily tasks and in event management business. Finally, the information obtained from the analysis can play a role in the development and/or evaluation of institutional planning.