The Psychometric Approach to User Satisfaction Measurement

Measuring user satisfaction is an important activity for Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) professionals and there exists a plethora of instruments for this purpose. The aim of this paper is to propose three criteria that practitioners can use when evaluating questionnaire quality prior to selecting an instrument for use in an evaluation. These criteria are: (1) the presence of a clear conceptualization of satisfaction based on a sound theoretical framework, (2) the use of the psychometric method in the questionnaire development process and (3) the extent to which the questionnaire developers have considered the usefulness of the final instrument in an evaluation setting. Two recently published satisfaction questionnaire are discussed in light of these three criteria.