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.
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