Students’ Perception on Quality Gap in Education Services in a Medical College in Kerala

Considering views and expectations of students to improve the quality of medical educational services is important in educational institutions.

This study aims to identify the quality gap in medical education services as perceived by students in a selected medical college in Kerala, using a modified SERVQUAL model instrument.

A cross-sectional study was conducted among undergraduate medical students in a selected medical college in Kerala. Through stratified random sampling, 300 undergraduate medical students were selected from differentphases. Avalidated modified SERVQUAL instrument was used for data collection. The expectation and perception of students on 26 items under five dimensions of quality of educational services, namely, tangible, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy, were measured in a five-point Likert scale.

The mean age of the participants was 20.5 ± 1.108 years. The results indicated that there were the negative quality gaps in all dimensions of the service quality. The highest and lowest differences of mean scores between students'expectations and perceptions were in the responsiveness and reliability dimensions, respectively. Paired t-test showed the significant statistical differences between students’ expectations and perceptions (p < 0.001) in all five dimensions of the service quality. Improvements are required in all dimensions of educational services quality with priority to responsiveness dimension.