The Nature of the Importance-Satisfaction Relationship in Ratings: Evidence from the Normative Data of the Noel-Levitz Student Satisfaction Inventory

Abstract

The nature of the relationship between importance and satisfaction in consumer ratings was studied on an aggregate basis using the national normative data from the last five annual surveys of student satisfaction conducted by the Noel-Levitz organization. The average importance and average satisfaction ratings for 11 scales of the Student Satisfaction Inventory were correlated. For three of the four college types (private 4-year, 2-year, and career), there was a linear relationship to the data, so that attributes with higher average satisfaction ratings also had higher average importance ratings. Conversely, when the mean importance and mean satisfaction ratings were plotted for the 4-year public colleges, there was a V-shape to the distribution, such that attributes with low average satisfaction or high average satisfaction received higher average importance ratings than the attributes with mid levels of satisfaction. These results indicate that both linear and non-linear associations between satisfaction and importance are possible.