Journal of the Formosan Medical Association
Volume 106, Issue 6 , Pages 475-484, 2007

Development of Service Quality Scale for Surgical Hospitalization

  • Ching-I Teng

      Affiliations

    • Department of Business Administration, Chang Gung University, Taipei, Taiwan
    • ,
  • Ching-Kang Ing

      Affiliations

    • Institute of Statistical Science, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan
    • Department of Economics, Taipei, Taiwan
    • ,
  • Hao-Yuan Chang

      Affiliations

    • Graduate Institute of Nursing, Taipei, Taiwan
    • ,
  • Kuo-Piao Chung

      Affiliations

    • Graduate Institute of Health Care Organization Administration, Taipei, Taiwan
    • Center for Health Insurance Research, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan
    • Corresponding Author InformationCorrespondence to: Dr Kuo-Piao Chung, Graduate Institute of Health Care Organization Administration, College of Public Health, National Taiwan University, 17 Suchow Road, Taipei 100, Taiwan

Received 12 December 2005; received in revised form 7 August 2006; accepted 6 February 2007.

Article Outline

Background/purpose

Findings from literature showed inconsistent results for applying service quality scale in hospitals. Moreover, hospitalization services are provided by diversified departments and a scale designed to measure the overall hospitalization quality is difficult and capturing special characteristics of different departments is also not an easy task. This study attempted to develop a service quality scale for surgical hospitalization (SQSH).

Methods

Forty-two items were designed via literature review, interviews with patients, health professionals and experienced care givers. A cross-sectional survey was conducted in one hospital. A total of 271 patients in surgical wards were chosen using stratified random sampling; 57.7% of the sampled patients were aged below 55, and 52.2% were male.

Results

The response rate was 93.4%. Twenty-nine items were retained through the scale development process and six factors were formed: needs management, assurance, sanitation, customization, convenience and quiet, and attention. Six factors explained 57.3% of total variance. Five experts assessed the content validity; content validity index was 0.964. Furthermore, all Cronbach's a exceeded 0.642 and all factor loadings exceeded 0.5. The concurrent validity correlation was 0.583, which had a p value below 0.01.

Conclusion

The SQSH has sufficient usefulness, reliability and validity. Future research on service quality can apply the SQSH scale to link with utilization intention and patient loyalty and attempt to develop a hospitalization quality scale for other departments.

Key Words:  scale development , service quality , surgical hospitalization

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PII: S0929-6646(09)60297-7

doi:10.1016/S0929-6646(09)60297-7

Journal of the Formosan Medical Association
Volume 106, Issue 6 , Pages 475-484, 2007

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