Quality Evaluation of Educational Services Gap in Neyshabur Faculty of Medical Sciences Based on Service Quality Scale

Abstract

Background: Recognition of views and expectations of students is an important issue to improve the quality of educational services in the universities. Objectives: The aim of this study was to evaluatethe quality gap of educational services by using Service Quality (SERVQUAL) instrument in Neyshabur Faculty of Medical Sciences in viewpoints of students. Materials and Methods: In this cross-sectional study, data were collected usingSERVQUAL instrument which comprisedof two questionnaires (perception and expectation) and each of them comprised 27 items based on the Likert scale. This questionnaire evaluatedfive dimensions of service: assurance, responsiveness, empathy, reliability and tangible Questionnaires were distributed between 199 students study atNeyshabur Faculty of Medical Sciences and 198 were returned (response rate = 99.5%); one questionnaire was excluded because it was notreturned. Quality gap of educational services was determined based on differences between students' perceptions and expectations. Data were analyzed using SPSS16 software. Results: The mean age of the students was 20.38±1.92 years; 65.7 % were female and 34.3% were male. There was a negative quality gap in each of the five SERVQUAL dimensions. The overall mean of quality gap was -1.31. The greatest and the least negative quality gap means were observed in the tangible (-1.62) and reliability (-1.02) dimensions, respectively. There were significant differences between perceptions and expectations of students in all dimensions represented by SERVQUAL (P < 0.05). Conclusions: The results of this study showed that there is a notable gap between students' expectations and what they have actually received of educational services. Thus, improvements are required in all dimensions of educational services quality.