Development and psychometric evaluation of the youth and caregiver Service Satisfaction Scale

Abstract

There is widespread need for the inclusion of service satisfaction measures in mental health services evaluation. The current paper introduces the Service Satisfaction Scale (SSS), a practical and freely available measure of global youth and adult caregiver service satisfaction. The development process, as well as results from a comprehensive psychometric evaluation in a large sample of clinically referred youth (N = 490) receiving home-based care, and their caregivers (N = 383), are presented. Multiple models for psychometric analyses were used including classical test theory, item response theory, and confirmatory factor analysis. As expected, SSS total scores were negatively skewed but the measure displayed otherwise adequate scale characteristics for both the youth and caregiver versions. Thus, the SSS is a brief and psychometrically sound instrument for measuring global satisfaction in home-based mental health service settings. It has several advantages compared to existing measures including brevity, parallel youth and caregiver forms, availability at no cost, and its development on a large sample of youth and caregivers with rigorous psychometric methodology.