I have heard of this before but I cannot remember what it means—what is meant by the term standard deviation?

What is meant by the term percentile and how should it be interpreted?

In my latest HealthStream Research employee survey report, I noticed that the employees at our hospital are described as being significantly more satisfied with the hospital as a place to work than they were last year. What does this mean? This result sounds good, but I am confused. I have to present the results of the employee survey to the executive team at my hospital. My presentation will be significantly better if I understand what is meant by a significant difference between two things.

We had to fire an employee recently. Somehow, everyone thinks that we fired this employee for speaking out about a staffing problem. Truth is, the employee was fired for completely different—and completely valid—reasons. For legal reasons, we can’t broadcast why we fired the employee, but the rumor mill is hurting morale. What can we do?

What is the difference between response rate and participation rate? Which is better?

We’ve been looking at cost and response rates for mail and telephone for patient survey administration. Are there any other factors we should consider?

On my latest physician survey report I noticed that administrator skill was at the top of the list of questions that are correlated with overall satisfaction. The report said that the correlation between administrator skill and the overall satisfaction of physicians was .80. Does that mean that high administrator skill causes physicians to be satisfied?

Can you explain when to use Top 4 & 5 Box Scores and when to focus only on Top Box Scores?

Will changing sample size also change our awareness results in our consumer survey? How exactly did you decide on our sample size?

How do you establish accountability for recognition programs? Should we set quotas for managers?

In my hospital, I am having a hard time explaining the advantages of telephone over mail for patient surveys. Which is really cheaper?

Could you please help us explain our percentile rankings to our employees? Some are having a hard time understanding how a 4.21 for pain management in our Maternity Unit put us in a relatively low percentile, but in Orthopedics a 4.21 put us in a high percentile.

For our last survey, we scored at the 80th percentile for patient satisfaction. One of the hospitals in our system scored just .08 higher than our hospital, yet they are at the 90th percentile? Could you explain how such a small difference can have such a huge impact?