The SERVQUAL instrument: Reliability and validity in South Africa

Abstract

The drive to measure service quality has become a major focus in many organizations, as the links between service quality and business performance have become more clear. Similarly, the development of SERVQUAL, an instrument for the measurement of service quality, has spurred much research in this area. Most of the research concerning SERVQUAL has focussed on the psychometric properties of rehability and validity. SERVQUAL has received considerable academic and practitioner research attention in South Africa; however, while isolated studies have commented on its robustness none have considered SERVQUAL across a range of industries and settings using different approaches. The study reported here attempts to redress this. It reports the results of SERVQUAL studies across a range of organizations and examines issues of reliability and validity. A major conclusion is that SERVQUAL in a South African context generally possesses strong statistical properties but needs further refinement particularly to overcome problems of discriminant validity. Opportunities for further research are identified.