DEVELOPING A MEASUREMENT SCALE FOR PERCEIVED SERVICE QUALITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY

Abstract

Education plays a pivotal role in the peace and economic growth of the nation. Consequently, it is essential to provide every student with a high-quality education. A person’s life is significantly impacted by the level of education. As a result, students are highly concerned about the quality of education especially when selecting a higher educational institute. The purpose of the study is to develop a measurement scale to evaluate the service quality provided by higher education. The study applied a positivism research philosophy by adopting a deductive research approach. The quantitative research method was applied, and data were collected through a questionnaire from 225 respondents who are pursuing a Higher National Diploma in Management (HNDM) and Business Administration (HNDBA) courses in SLIATE, ATI - Dehiwala. A stratified random sampling technique was adopted to select the respondents from each course. The researcher applied the SERVQUAL model using its five dimensions tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy to evaluate the level of service quality in higher education. Cronbach Alpha was used to measure the reliability and the value of 0.816 indicates that the questionnaire used to gather data on the service quality construct is highly reliable. Based on the result, composite reliability (CR) values for all constructs are above 0.70 and the AVE values are within 0.523 and 0.935 which confirmed the internal consistency in scale items. The validity of the measurements was performed through convergent and discriminant validity using the Fornell and Larcker (1981) test. The finding of the test shows that the average variance extracted (AVE) value of all the constructs is higher than 0.5 and the AVE square root in the diagonal was greater than the squared correlation with other constructs in off-diagonal which confirmed convergent and discriminant validity. Initially, 20 items were developed using five dimensions of the SERVQUAL model. After conducting the test, 20 items were reduced to 14 items, and 6 items that didn’t meet the necessary criteria were removed. Finally, a new scale was developed to measure the service quality with 5 dimensions responsiveness, reliability, tangible, assurance, and empathy for higher education.