UnilQual: University Life Quality Scale
Abstract
Recently, higher
education sector has been recognized as an intangibly dominant service sector
and universities have been considered as service providers besides their
traditional roles. Accordingly, quality in higher education has become an important competitive element
and sustaining service quality is now accepted as a sine qua non for
universities. Yet, since the higher
education sector has very different characteristics than other service sectors,
measurement and improvement of service quality is becoming a more complex
issue. Higher education quality is a multidimensional phenomenon with
institutional, physical and psychological components. It is not only measured by the quality of
services, but also by the added value and transformative impact on the
students. . In this context, this paper reports a study conducted to develop
and validate a quality scale (UnilQual) for measuring service quality in higher
education. . The scale was based on the concept of “quality of life” and designed
to measure “university life quality of students”. To this end, a 56-item scale
with 7 subscales was developed . in and administered to a sample of 314
undergraduate students The mean age of the sample was 19.25 . The results of
the Exploratory Factor Analysis revealed
that UnilQual can be used as a valid and reliable measurement tool.The Cronbach
alpha value was found as .96 for the scale. The correlation values between the
subscales and the total score addressed a positive and significant relationship,
as well.
Keywords
Quality of university life,Service quality scale,University,Higher education
Kaynakça
- Abdullah, F. (2006). The development of HEdPERF: A new measuring instrument of service quality for the higher education sector. International Journal of Consumer Studies, 30 (6), 569–581. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1470-6431.2005.00480.x
- Ali, F., Zhou, Y., Hussain, K., Nair, P. K. &Ragavan, N. A. (2016). Does higher education service quality effect student satisfaction, image and loyalty? A study of international students in Malaysian public universities. Quality Assurance in Education, 24(1), 70-94.
- Ali, M. & Ahmed, M. (2018). Determinants of students’ loyalty to university: A service-based approach. https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/84352/1/MPRA_paper_84352.pdf
- Anderson, E. W., Fornell, C. & Lehmann, D. R. (1994). Customer satisfaction, market share, and profitability: Findings from Sweden. The Journal of Marketing, 8(3), 53-66.
- Arambewela, R. & Hall, J. (2006). A comparative analysis of international education satisfaction using SERVQUAL. Journal of Services Research, 6(Special), 141-163.
- Baron, S., Harris, K., Hilton, T. (2009). Services Marketing: Text and Cases (3rd ed.). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
- Bauer, R. A. (Ed.). (1966). Social indicators. Cambridge: The M.I.T.
- Bektaş, H. &Akman, S. U. (2013). Yüksek öğretimde hizmet-kalitesi ölçeği: güvenilirlik ve geçerlilik analizi. Ekonometri ve İstatistik e-Dergisi, (18), 116-133. http://dergipark.gov.tr/iuekois/issue/8996/112135
- Brock, D. (1993). Quality of life measures in health care and medical ethics. The quality of life, 95-132.
- Caruana, A., Money, A. H. & Berthon, P. R. (2000). Service quality and satisfaction–the moderating role of value. European Journal of marketing, 34(11/12), 1338-1353.