RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SERVICE QUALITY AND USER SATISFACTION IN ACADEMIC LIBRARIES: A CASE OF KITUI CAMPUS AND MACHAKOS UNIVERSITY, KENYA
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SERVICE QUALITY AND USER SATISFACTION IN ACADEMIC LIBRARIES: A CASE OF KITUI CAMPUS AND MACHAKOS UNIVERSITY, KENYA
Constance M. Kinya - Department of Library and Information Science, Kenyatta University. Kenya
Dr. Daniel Muthee - Department of Library and Information Science, Kenyatta University. Kenya
ABSTRACT
This learning purposes to examine the affiliation between service worth and client gratification in Kenyan university libraries. The following objectives guided this study: determining the constraint the user face during service encounter; establishing what extra library services needed to cater for the needs of students; determining the affiliation amongst service worthiness and user gratification of students at Machakos and Kitui university libraries and the degree of satisfaction provided by the services given, as well as how service quality aspects impact customer gratification, are all issues that students confront throughout service encounters. With the five facets of service quality, the SERVQUAL instrument for measuring service eminence, which is based on 22 questions and assesses a user's evaluation of service quality, was utilized. The researcher utilized a cross - sectional design as an expressive research design in order to offer an overall picture of how service quality affects customer satisfaction in academic libraries. The study's target population was third and fourth-year academic undergraduates who use and made use of the academic library during the time of research data collection. A systematic random sampling method was used to select a sample size of 161 respondents. The primary data was collected using questionnaires that was distributed to the two libraries. The information analysis was done by use of both descriptive and inferential statistics. The study found out that that some library users frequented the library once every week, while others frequented the library daily. They users added that they visited the library because it had individualized attention by the librarians. It was noted that Personnel at the library are well dressed and neat at all times. Another discovery made by the respondents is that the library keeps accurate records e.g., circulation, accounts records and academic reports etc. it was noted that Personnel of library are not too busy to respond promptly to students’ requests. On regression analysis, the study found out that significance value of p less than 0.05 was established having an f-value of 22.164 which is significant at (p=0.00). The regression equation deduced that holding the other factors in the equation constant at zero, service quality will increase by 0.782 (p = 0.00 ˂0.05). Finally, the correlation coefficient, R, was 0.341 which showed that there is a great interrelation between service quality and user satisfaction.
