Answer provided by:
Berke Bilbay, Vice President, Product Management

To assist the hospital in identifying its areas of strength, as well as its opportunities for improvement, HealthStream Research provides a leverage analysis. Targeting the opportunities identified by the leverage analysis, along with successful strategies for improvement, will result in the most significant increase in performance.  The leverage analysis is a visual outline of the importance and performance of the survey items.  By presenting 1) how the hospital is performing compared to the HealthStream Research Database for each survey item and 2) how important these items are to satisfaction at the hospital, the leverage analysis gives management a powerful tool that will help them in prioritizing organization-wide initiatives and presenting survey results.

Performance is presented on the horizontal axis of the leverage analysis and is measured by a percentile ranking that compares the hospital's scores with the HealthStream Research Database averages. A rating that is the same as the HealthStream Research Database average will be ranked at the 50th percentile (the middle of the horizontal scale). A rating that is higher than the database average will receive a percentile ranking above the 50th percentile and will be plotted on the right-hand quadrants. If the hospital scores at the 80th percentile of the database, this would mean that the hospital has received an average rating that places it in the top 20% of hospitals across the nation.

The leverage analysis shows how successful the hospital is. Whenever the hospital is scoring better than the HealthStream Research Database (above 50th percentile), it is a positive result for the hospital and those items will be plotted on the right-hand quadrants of the leverage analysis. It is important to note that only attributes with HealthStream Research Database comparisons are included in the leverage analysis.  Importance, on the other hand, is derived from a statistical analysis (Pearson correlation) and shows the strength of the relationship between individual survey items and overall satisfaction at the hospital. The correlation coefficient is a measure of the degree of relationship between two variables, in this case between individual performance attributes and overall satisfaction. The correlation coefficient can be any value between +1.00 and -1.00. The closer the correlation coefficient is to one, the stronger the relationship.

One important point is that the actual location of any item on the leverage analysis is just as important as the quadrant itself. Items that are farther on the right show higher performance, while items that are closer to the top show higher importance.  When interpreting the leverage analysis, HealthStream Research recommends focusing on items located in the upper half of the graph, as they have been identified to be the most important for job satisfaction. Items located in the upper left-hand quadrant are High Priority Targets, as they receive low scores and are predictive of overall satisfaction.  In contrast, attributes located in the upper right-hand quadrant can be considered areas of strength, as these receive high scores and are the greatest drivers of satisfaction.

Sample Leverage Analysis

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