The influence of socio-demographic characteristics on respondents’ perceptions of healthcare service quality

• DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.2529133
• Publication Date: 2018-12-01
• Authors: Stanisław Manulik; Piotr Karniej; Joanna Rosińćzuk
• Keywords: Healthcare service

Manulik Stanisław, Karniej Piotr, Rosińczuk Joanna . The influence of socio-demographic characteristics on respondents’ perceptions of healthcare service quality. Journal of Education, Health and Sport. 2018;8(12):708-724. eISNN 2391-8306. DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2529133 http://ojs.ukw.edu.pl/index.php/johs/article/view/6429 The journal has had 7 points in Ministry of Science and Higher Education parametric evaluation. Part b item 1223 (26/01/2017). 1223 Journal of Education, Health and Sport eissn 2391-8306 7 © The Authors 2018; This article is published with open access at Licensee Open Journal Systems of Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz, Poland Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author (s) and source are credited. This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non commercial license Share alike. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) which permits unrestricted, non commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited. The authors declare that there is no conflict of interests regarding the publication of this paper. Received: 20.11.2018. Revised: 20.12.2018. Accepted: 31.12.2018. The influence of socio-demographic characteristics on respondents’ perceptions of healthcare service quality Stanisław Manulik, Piotr Karniej, Joanna Rosińczuk Wroclaw Medical University Abstract Introduction Service quality is the customer’s subjective assessment that plays an increasingly important role as an element of competitive advantage in the health sector. Aim The main purpose was to determine whether the selected socio-demographic characteristics had a considerable impact on patients' quality priorities and their perceptions of service quality; and whether patients of public and private healthcare centres differed regarding their quality priorities and perceptions of the service they received. Material and methods The study included 412 patients who were referred to a public (n=211) or a private (n=201) centre. The SERVQUAL questionnaire was used as the primary assessment tool. Respondents were to answer 22 questions grouped into five different dimensions that assessed their perceptions of service quality. Results Respondents' expectations exceeded perceptions of service quality offered by public and private healthcare centres. Private sector respondents had the highest quality expectations regarding hardware and infrastructure, whereas public sector respondents were primarily concerned with relationships with personnel. The impact of socio-demographic characteristics on respondents' expectations and perceptions of healthcare service quality was unclear. Conclusion Socio-demographic characteristics do not have a clear impact on patients' expectations and perceptions of healthcare service quality and as such, should not be used in the process of quality management. Keywords: public health, healthcare service quality, quality management, socio-demographic characteristics