The evolution of user satisfaction as a surrogate measure of information system effectiveness

Abstract

With information technology being "the largest line item in Corporate America's capital spending budget... companies need to develop better ways of measuring office productivity and the contribution that managers and other white-collar workers make t the bottom line." This thesis reviews the MIS literature over the last 20 years dealing with measuring information system (IS) effectiveness. In particular it tracks the genesis and evaluation of user satisfaction as a surrogate measure of system effectiveness. tThe concern is whether the surrogate, user satisfaction, an opinion is the same effectiveness, the behavior, an action. It was found that an instrument for measuring user satisfaction developed by Bailey and Pearson (1983) has been widely accepted and used by the MIS community for measuring IT effectiveness. However, it was also found that many studies failed to consider any other methods of measuring effectiveness and many also misapplied the instrument as well.