A scale to measure sustainable campus services in higher education: “Sustainable Service Quality”

Abstract

Abstract This study aims to develop a measuring tool which can address two independent research areas in the literature: Sustainability in higher education and service quality in higher education. Both subjects are studied independently in the literature, showing a need for an integrated approach that bridges these areas. For achieving this purpose, a new scale was developed based on a questionnaire applied to two universities in Turkey. The scale aimed to measure the perceptions of the students regarding the quality of sustainable campus services. The questionnaire consisted of 22 questions on several aspects of campus services which are related to sustainability. A total of 234 samples were used for Exploratory Factor Analysis for determining the underlying structures in the data set. The scale was validated with satisfactory Kaiser-Meyer Olkin and Bartlett’s test results. Five dimensions were extracted, which represent sustainable service quality. After validation, the scale was applied to two universities located in geographically and socio-economically different regions of Turkey. The term chosen for the proposed combined scale is Sustainable Service Quality (SusServQual). With additional data, t-tests were applied to 308 students aiming to compare the two universities based on perceived quality scores. The results show that the university located in the socio-economically more developed region performed better regarding the overall satisfaction score and four of the five dimensions. The scores were also weighted utilizing a modified method of Analytical Hierarchy Process. Instead of crisp numbers which forces the decision maker to think in mathematical terms while comparing criteria, linguistic terms, each of which corresponds to a fuzzy number were used. Thus, a more accurate evaluation was obtained where the decision maker’s subjectivity and ambiguity of the situation are important.