A STUDY OF STUDENT'S PERCEPTIONS OF SERVICE QUALITY OF AN ACADEMIC ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICE AT AN IRISH UNIVERSITY

SERVPERF is recognised as one of the most widely used instrument in measuring service quality. This research employs an application of SERVPERF, the performance component of the Service Quality scale (SERVQUAL) within an Irish... [ view full abstract ]

SERVPERF is recognised as one of the most widely used instrument in measuring service quality. This research employs an application of SERVPERF, the performance component of the Service Quality scale (SERVQUAL) within an Irish University academic administration office, the Student Information Desk (SID). SID is a ‘one-stop shop’ which aims to answer all student-related queries from a single location. The study conforms to earlier research that avails of SERVPERF in the public sector, including universities. However, most studies examining service quality at universities concentrate on academic activities and few studies focus on administrative activities. Secondly, there is a lack of research carried out, examining service quality from the students’ perspective. This research addresses this lacuna by assessing SID’s service quality. The research avails of administering the SERVPERF questionnaire to the first and second year students of NUI Galway. Findings indicate that although the first and second year students assess the Performance and Importance of their dimensions of service quality in the same way, the dimension reliability was ranked the highest in the Importance assessment compared to the Performance assessment, assurance was ranked the highest. Repeating the questionnaire periodically would be constructive in tracking SID’s service quality trends.