The Impact of Consumer Participation on Perceived Service Quality

This paper reports on a study that uses a modified SERVQUAL instrument to explore the relationships between consumer participation and perceived service quality for two different types of health service providers in Australia, medical care providers (represented by General Practitioners in Medical Centres) and health care providers (represented by nurses in Maternal and Child Health Centres). Relationships are established between participation and overall service quality for both groups with consumers of health care indicating higher levels of participation in the service delivery than consumers of medical care. The relationships between overall service quality, and participation and the dimensions of quality suggest that the service quality construct is different in the two health environments and that for health care, participation appears to share variance with at least one of the dimensions of service quality.