Student satisfaction and the progress in their performance: case study at an IELTS center in Vietnam
Purpose
Previous studies have focused on the relationship between students’ satisfaction and students’ academic performance in a higher education context. However, little is known about the relationship between students’ satisfaction and the progress in their performance regarding studying for the IELTS. The author, therefore, gravitates towards exploring the correlation between student satisfaction and the progress in their IELTS performance. The study was conducted at McIELTS center in Ho Chi Minh City, using a modified version of the SERVPERF model developed by Cronin and Taylor (1992).
Quantitative and qualitative methods were adopted with the use of an online survey and a semi-structured interview respectively. Questionnaires were sent to 123 students who are currently or were previously enrolled in the classes at McIELTS from June to October 2020. The study analyzed a total of 63 valid responses and interviewed 33 respondents. Cronbach’s Alpha, Pearson correlation test, multiple linear regression, and t-test were used to analyze the data.
Results
The findings suggest that student satisfaction has a negligible correlation with the progress in their IELTS performance because of lack of valid data. All 5 key components of service quality (Competence, Reliability, Tangibles, Empathy, Responsiveness - CRTER) have moderate and low correlations with student overall satisfaction.
Tangibles and Empathy are the strongest components that affect student satisfaction and male students have a better impression of these two components than their female peers. Apart from that, if students spend 2.5 months taking a certain class at the center, they will be expected to have an increase of 0.395 in their IELTS performance. In this regard, female students are likely to perform better than their male peers as their study time increases.