Social psychological determinants of patient satisfaction: A test of five hypotheses

Susie Linder-Pelz

Social Science & Medicine, 1982, vol. 16, issue 5, 583-589

Abstract: Five hypotheses regarding the social psychological determinants of patient satisfaction were tested among patients attending the primary care clinics of a university medical center in Manhatten. The social psychological variables operationalized here were expectations, values, entitlement and perceived occurrences; the three dimensions of satisfaction studied were doctor conduct, convenience and general satisfaction. The social psychological variables together were found to explain only a small proportion of the variance in satisfaction, although their contribution varied with the dimension of satisfaction. Expectations consistantly explained most of the variance in satisfaction ratings; particularly noteworthy was the direct effect of prior expectations of the doctor's conduct on subsequent satisfaction with that dimension of the care received. Values had little independent effect on satisfaction, and the combination of values and expectations (their interaction) was unrelated to satisfaction. Feelings of entitlement were also unrelated to satisfaction ratings. There was some support for the discrepancy model, which holds that the greater the discrepancy between perceived occurrences and prior expectations the less the satisfaction. The importance of carrying out further methodological studies aimed at developing reliable measures of these constructs is stressed.

Date: 1982
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277-9536(82)90312-4
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:16:y:1982:i:5:p:583-589

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().