Measuring Student's Satisfaction of Educational Services Quality and Relationship with Services Quality in Zanjan University of Medical Sciences

Satisfaction is costumer response to an organization success. Costumer satisfaction is used as an important and strategic tool in organization in order to achieve competitive advantage. Thus, higher education institutes increasingly pay attention to satisfying student's expectations as primary costumers. Hence, this study was implemented in order to measure student's satisfaction of educational services quality in Zanjan University of medical sciences. This study was implemented in Zanjan University of medical sciences in 2009. For implementing the study, the sample 320 of students was selected randomly by stratified sampling. In order to measure services quality (SQ), the questionnaire SERVQUAL was used. In addition to SQ questions, this questionnaire contained 6 questions about overall satisfaction of educational services. Data were analyzed by SSPS 11.5 program and descriptive and analytical statistics such as mean, one-way ANOVA, correlation and multiple regressions were used. Mean scores of student's satisfaction of educational SQ was (2.76 ± 1. 06). In context of overall satisfaction of educational services, the largest mean score (3.17) and the least mean score (2.24) were related to faculties of pharmacology and medicine respectively. One-way ANOVA test showed that the observed difference in mean score of overall satisfaction of educational services quality was statistically significant on the basis of faculty (P< 0.001, f = 14.02). Pearson correlation coefficient showed that there was statistically significant positive relation between overall satisfaction and quality of educational services (r =. 51), empathy (r =. 49) and assurance (r =. 46), (p <. 01). Multiple regression analysis showed that there was statistically significant positive relation between students overall satisfactions and responsiveness and assurance dimensions (p <. 05). findings of this study showed that responsiveness and assurance aspects are more important than other educational SQ aspects for satisfying students of educational services quality. Thus, managers, policy makers and lecturers can use results of this research in reallocation of resources and designing strategies of educational services quality improvement.