ABSTRACT
Objective To develop appropriate evaluation methods of local basic public health services which are suitable to county level and above.Methods Data on basic public health services of 1 1 cities in Zhejiang province in 201 2 was evaluated by different evaluation methods including weighted synthetic scored method,weighted synthetic index method, Weighted Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (Topsis ) and Weighted Rank -Sum Ratio (RSR).The consistency of evaluation results were tested by Kendall's coefficient of concordance W test.Combination evaluation was conducted to evaluate four single synthetic evaluation results through average method,weighted average combination evaluation method and hierarchical clustering analysis.Results Different synthetic evaluation methods had different evaluation results.However,in the order,the top two were all Hangzhou and Ningbo.Kendall's W test showed good consistence of four evaluation results.Rank of 1 1 cities were Hangzhou,Ningbo,Shaoxing,Jiaxing,Huzhou, Taizhou,Jinhua,Zhoushan,Lishui,Wenzhou and Quzhou based on combination evaluation value by average method, which was the same to the rank based on weighted average combination evaluation result.Eleven cities could be classified into four categories by hierarchical clustering analysis with statistical significance (P <0.01 ):Excellent (Hangzhou, Ningbo),Good (Huzhou,Jiaxing,Shaoxing),Middle (Zhoushan,Jinhua,Taizhou)and Poor (Wenzhou,Quzhou, Lishui).Conclusion These four synthetic evaluation methods used in this study are all suitable to county level and above in basic public health services evaluation.Various synthetic evaluation methods could be used in practice with combination evaluation of various evaluation results.Average method which is convenient and accurate is preferred when consistency of various synthetic evaluation results was testified.Hierarchical clustering analysis could be used for combination evaluation when no precise rank is needed.