Abstract
Municipalities in Mazandaran province (Iran), like other service organizations, are working
within legal frameworks. In light of the increasing importance of customer satisfaction and
respect in municipalities, the objective of this article is to identify and evaluate indicators of
social factors that affect the quality of educational services. The statistical population of the
present study included experts and university professors in the Mazandaran province. 15 people
were selected by a non-random sampling method. Based on previous studies, research literature,
and interviews conducted, the questionnaire was designed and approved. Of 36 questions on
social factors that affect the quality of educational services, 7 were related to the quality of
educational services. The examination of the items of the questionnaire was carried out with the
Delphi technique approach and the suitability of the components and dimensions was measured
using the SPSS software. According to the results of the second round of the Delphi technique,
33 indicators of social factors that affect the quality of educational services and 5 indicators of
quality of service obtained a score higher than 3. The educational services based on the criteria
proposed by the experts included the behavior of the employees, in addition to their competence
and skills, innovation in the provision of educational services, coordination and responsibility
of the organization, organizational trust, organizational performance, social responsibility and
the labor values of employees. Furthermore, the mean of all dimensions was between 4 and 5
(between appropriate and completely appropriate). In conclusion, there was an adjustment
between all dimensions of social factors that affect the quality of educational services according
to the proposed criteria.
Keywords: Social factors, service quality, service organizations, experts, Delphi technique.
Introduction
Since the role of educational services in the daily lives of human beings was revealed,
the issue of “quality of service” has also been considered among organizations. The quality
of educational services is recognized as the main component of the success in an organization
in today's competitive environment, and any decrease in customer satisfaction with the
organization due to poor quality of service is a concern. Nowadays, the quality of educational
services is an important and effective factor in the success and failure of organizations,
including municipalities (Mohammadi & Bakhtiari, 2015). In other words, quality of service
is defined as the measurement of performance against expectations or the gap between
expectations and perception of educational services (Shahriar, 2013). The problem of quality
of service is created in organizations that do not pay attention to recognizing customer needs
and meeting them. Due to limited resources that affect all organizations, including
municipalities, managers must first identify the needs and expectations of their customers and
then measure their perceptions of educational services received, the gap between the
expectations and perceptions of their customers and finally select the most cost-effective
solutions to fill the existing gap (Bahadori et al., 2013). Nowadays, in a competitive world,
customers are at the center of attention of service organizations such as municipalities and
their satisfaction is the main factor in gaining the competitive advantage of organizations, so
Revista de Investigación Apuntes Universitarios
ISSN 2312-4253(impresa)
ISSN 2078-4015(en línea)