Overview
Today, city officials have limited resources which need to be targeted to activities that are of the most benefit to their citizens. Two of the most important criteria for decision making are (1) to target resources toward services of the highest importance to citizens; and (2) to target resources toward those services where citizens are the least satisfied.

The Importance-Satisfaction (IS) rating is a unique tool that allows public officials to better understand both of these highly important decision making criteria for each of the services they are providing. The Importance-Satisfaction rating is based on the concept that cities will maximize overall citizen satisfaction by emphasizing improvements in those service categories where the level of satisfaction is relatively low and the perceived importance of the service is relatively high.

Methodology
The rating is calculated by summing the percentage of responses for items selected as the first, second, and third most important services for the City to emphasize over the next two years. This sum is then multiplied by 1 minus the percentage of respondents that indicated they were positively satisfied with the City's performance in the related area (the sum of the ratings of 4 and 5 on a 5-point scale excluding “don't knows”). “Don't know” responses are excluded from the calculation to ensure that the satisfaction ratings among service categories are comparable. [IS=Importance x (1-Satisfaction)].

Example of the Calculation
Respondents were asked to identify the major categories of city services they thought should receive the most emphasis over the next two years. Twenty-six percent (26%) ranked parks as one of the most important service to emphasize over the next two years.

With regard to satisfaction, parks was ranked second overall with 91% rating parks and recreation as a “4” or a “5” on a 5-point scale excluding “Don't know” responses. The I-S rating for parks was calculated by multiplying the sum of the most important percentages by 1 minus the sum of the satisfaction percentages. In this example, 26% was multiplied by 9% (1-0.91). This calculation yielded an I-S rating of 0.0228, which was ranked sixth out of nine major service categories.

The maximum rating is 1.00 and would be achieved when 100% of the respondents select an activity as one of their top choices to emphasize over the next two years and 0% indicate that they are positively satisfied with the delivery of the service.

The lowest rating is 0.00 and could be achieved under either one of the following two situations:

• if 100% of the respondents were positively satisfied with the delivery of the service

• if none (0%) of the respondents selected the service as one of the most important areas for the City to emphasize over the next two years.

Interpreting the Ratings
Ratings that are greater than or equal to 0.20 identify areas that should receive significantly more emphasis over the next two years. Ratings from .10 to .20 identify service areas that should receive increased emphasis. Ratings less than .10 should continue to receive the current level of emphasis.

• Definitely Increase Emphasis (IS>=0.20)

• Increase Current Emphasis (0.10<=IS<0.20)

• Maintain Current Emphasis (IS<0.10)

The results for Lenexa are provided in the following PDF document.

Importance Satisfaction Rating