Measuring the Quality of Education and Health Services : The Use of Perception Data from Indonesia
Satisfaction surveys offer a potentially convenient and cost-effective means for measuring the quality of services. However, concerns about subjectivity and selection bias impede greater use of satisfaction data. This paper analyzes satisfaction da...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2012
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/main?menuPK=64187510&pagePK=64193027&piPK=64187937&theSitePK=523679&menuPK=64187510&searchMenuPK=64187283&siteName=WDS&entityID=000158349_20090831132043 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/4225 |
| Summary: | Satisfaction surveys offer a potentially
convenient and cost-effective means for measuring the
quality of services. However, concerns about subjectivity
and selection bias impede greater use of satisfaction data.
This paper analyzes satisfaction data about health and
educational services from the 2006 second round of the
Governance and Decentralization Survey in Indonesia to
assess whether satisfaction data can serve as reliable
indicators of quality, despite dubiously high levels of
reported satisfaction. The authors use an expectation
disconfirmation model that posits that a user s satisfaction
with a facility improves with the (positive) difference
between the actual quality of the facility and the
household s expected standard for quality, which is
influenced by its socioeconomic characteristics. The
findings show that, after taking into account the
expectations of households, reported satisfaction does vary
significantly with objective indicators of quality. The
analysis also checks for possible selection bias affecting
the results by using a two-stage selection model. The model
yields policy-relevant insights into the aspects of service
delivery that most affect satisfaction, highlights
differences across rich and poor districts, and shows that
once the role of expectations has been factored in, the
variation in user satisfaction can be highly informative for
policymakers and researchers alike. |
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