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Evaluating the service quality of the public elective course in University using

SERVQUAL model

This research’s aim is to evaluate the service quality of the public elective course in University by using SERVQUAL model, to know undergraduate students’ views on the service quality of the public elective course. After that, some suggestion for improving the level of its service quality will be given.

In order to do the research, identifying several sub-questions is very necessary.

And my sub-questions of this research are as follows.

1. What is the public elective course in University? 2. What is SERVQUAL?

3. Why is SERVQUAL suitable for evaluating the service quality of the public

elective course in University?

4. How to use SERVQUAL to evaluate the service quality of the public elective

course in University?

Service quality is being paid more and more attention to by academic circles since 1985. And SERVQUAL is one of the useful instruments to evaluate service quality. Every industry can apply this instrument, and educational business is included.

Parasuraman et al.(1985) proposed a 10-dimension service quality model, which are tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, competence, access, courtesy,

communication, credibility, security, understanding/knowing customer. Parasuraman et al. (1988) studied some industries, and summarized a 5-dimension service quality model, which are tangibility, responsiveness, assurance, empathy, reliability. And this became the basement of SERVQUAL methodology.

Many years have passed, SERVQUAL has become a recognized useful tool to analyse the service quality in different industry. For the past few years, there are some scholars had used SERVQUAL to evaluate educational services. Ahmad Ali Foroughi Abari et al. (2011) evaluated the quality of services of postgraduate school in a non-governmental university “Islamic Azad University-Khorasgan Branch”, to know students’ views toward current level and expected level of quality. Angela Jiewanto et al. (2012) studied the influence of service quality, university image, and student satisfaction toward WOM(word of mouth) Intention, and found it is important to increase the SERVQUAL, which are tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy for increasing student WOM Intention which regards to sustainability in higher education sector. Ehsan Akhlaghi et al. (2012) evaluated educational service quality in technical and vocational colleges from students’ perspective by using SERVQUAL model, and found that in the current educational center, there are quality gaps in all the service quality dimensions, the most outstanding gap is for responsiveness dimension and the least one is for reliability. Hatice Camgoz-Akdag and Selim Zaim (2012) used a 41-item instrument of service quality based on the SERVQUAL five dimensions to verify and validate the underlying dimensions of perception of student satisfaction, TQM and organizational performance. Toni Lupo

(2013) used a method based on a recent extension of the SERVQUAL model combined with the Fuzzy Set Theory and the Analytic Hierarchy Process method to effectively measure education quality in Italian higher education area, and found that the professors’ perception of service quality meaningfully influences the overall service performance level. These scholars had modified SERVQUAL to evaluate the service quality relevant to education, and they also got some very practical results. These proved this research is necessary and operational. So to do some research on educational services in depth has important theoretical and practical consequences.

Every year, education departments assess the quality of teaching in major colleges and universities. The quality of teaching in colleges and universities becomes the focus of society. Because teaching is one kind of services, so evaluating its quality means evaluating its service quality. So SERVQUAL can be used to evaluate its service quality. In the teaching system, the public elective course plays a very special and important role in University. This course is very important and aims for culturing students’ interest and broadening their horizons, and it has an important affection on educational quality. So to conduct the research evaluating the service quality of the public elective course becomes necessary and practical.

In order to conduct this research, quantitative method will be used.

I will think about 100 questions about the public elective course, and then I will divide them into five dimensions based on SERVQUAL model, which are tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy.

Because educational business is not same with other industry, I will do some

interviews to collect ideas of undergraduate students on the public elective course. Then I will adjust the questions from 100 to 40. After that, I can use a Likert scale to do some pre-tests. Then using the data collected, I will check the five dimensions whether they are suitable and reliable.

If the dimensions are not suitable, I will adjust the hypothesis, and then propose 5 or more dimensions. If it is in accordance with I expected, I will do the following steps.

After the questionnaire design being completed, I will choose some undergraduate students on eastern campus in University as my subject investigated. And in order to keep the data representative, I will use stratified sampling by grade and sex.

After data collection being completed, I will use SPSS to calculate the data, then analyse the results to check whether it is in accordance with my expectation. If there are some results that are not in accordance with my expectation, I will do some interviews to find the explanation for these questions properly. When I finish checking the answers and the results, I will write the report.

References

Parasuraman A.,Zeithaml,valarie A.,& Berry,Leonard L.(1985).A conceptual model of service quality and its implications for future research, Journal of Marketing,49,41-50.

Parasuraman A.,Zeithaml,Valarie A.,& Berry,Leonard L.(1988).Servqual: A Multiple-Item Scale For Measuring Consumer Perceptions of service quality,Journal of Retailing,64,12-40.

Toni Lupo (2013).A fuzzy ServQual based method for reliable measurements of education quality in Italian higher education area. Expert Systems with Applications,40(17),7096-7110.

Ehsan Akhlaghi,Shahnaz Amini,Hossein Akhlaghi(2012).Evaluating Educational Service Quality in Technical and Vocational Colleges using SERVQUAL Model.Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences,46,5285-5289. Ahmad

Ali

Foroughi

Abari,Mohammad

Hossein

Yarmohammadian,Mina

Esteki(2011).Assessment of quality of education a non-governmental university via SERVQUAL model.Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences,15,2299-2304. Hatice Camgoz-Akdag, Selim Zaim(2012).Education: A Comparative Structural Equation Modeling Study.Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 47, 874-880. Angela Jiewanto,Caroline Laurens,Liza Nelloh (2012).Influence of Service Quality, University Image, and Student Satisfaction toward WOM Intention: A Case Study on Universitas Pelita Harapan Surabaya.Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences,40,16-23.