Department Scores : Weighted Averages

Unlike the simple average, the weighted average is influenced by the volume of responses for survey questions that are associated with specific departments.

This average is weighted with respect to the number of guest responses and not just the straight average.  If each question on your survey had the same number of responses per question, then it would make sense to calculate the simple average. Since that is not the case and each question does have a different response count, you will want to “weight” each question accordingly. 

We use the weighted average for Department Scores within the Revinate platform today for all reporting.

EXAMPLE
If we are looking for an overall department score for "Front Desk" which for this example we can say consists of 4 questions within a survey:

1. Friendliness
2. Helpfulness
3. Check In
4. Check Out

See the chart below:

Question #1 had 10 responses and an overall score of 90. 
Therefore, it has more "weight" than question #3 with only 2 responses.  

 

To get the weighted average for "Front Desk", we will need to multiply the overall score of each question by the number of guest responses to each question, and then add the results to get a total value. 

Questions	Scores	Responses	Score* Number of Responses
Front Desk: Friendliness	90	10	900
Front Desk: Helpfulness	85	4	340
Front Desk: Check In	45	2	90
Front Desk: Check Out	85	4	340
Totals		20	1670
	Weighted Average (1670/20)=		83.5
	Average of Averages (90+85+45+85/4)=		76.25

 

From this point you will need to divide the total value,1670, by the number of responses, 20, to get the weighted department score average of 83.5 .

Check out this article on how scores are calculated for more information,

For additional information on surveys, reporting see our Surveys Reporting Training Video.