Evaluation of the educational services quality from the viewpoint of postgraduate students at Kermanshah University of medical sciences in 2019

At present, the SERVQUAL model is one of the most significant tools for measuring customers’ expectations and perceptions in organizations. Determination of expectations and perceptions of students who are the main university customers from educational services can provide valuable information to the programmers to improve the condition of educational services. Therefore, this study aims to measure the quality of education services from the viewpoint of postgraduate students at Kermanshah Medical Sciences University using the SERVQUAL model in 2019.

This was a descriptive cross‑sectional study. The population under the study consisted of 162 students at the postgraduate education section (Master’s degree and Ph.D.) studying in the second semester of the academic year of 2019 at Kermanshah Medical Sciences University. The standard SERVQUAL questionnaire was used for data collection, which included five dimensions of the quality of educational services, and the random‑stratified sampling method was employed. The data were analyzed using the SPSS Statistics software (version 23.0, SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA), and descriptive and other statistical tests, including the Pearson correlation coefficient, and paired and independent t‑tests were performed.

Based on the students’ perspective in the provision of service there was quality gap existed in all services, and the largest gap was in the reliability dimension (−0.37), and after that, empathy (−0.37), guaranty (0.27), and responsiveness (−0.24) dimensions, respectively, and the lowest one was in the tangible dimension (0.15). There was a statistically significant observed difference between the quality gap in different educational dimensions (P > 0.001).

Research findings showed that students were not meeting their expectations from the presented educational services. Hence, holding a training workshop is suggested in the field of how to serve and enhance communication skills for employees and teachers.