Measuring Satisfaction with Public Services: Exploring the Delivery Paradox A Work in Progress

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Measuring Satisfaction with Public Services
Exploring the Delivery ParadoxA Work in Progress

• Nicki Senior
• University of Nottingham
• lqxns_at_nottingham.ac.uk

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Identified Themes

• Knowledge Formation and Extraction
• Identity
• Outcomes

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Expectations as the Dominant Discourse

• Good is not good,
• when better is expected.
• Thomas Fuller (1608-1661)

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Expectancy Disconfirmation Theory

• Consumers are believed to form expectations of
  product performance characteristics prior to
  purchase.
• Subsequent purchase and usage reveal actual
  performance levels that are compared to
  expectation levels using a better-than,
  worse-than heuristic.
• The judgment that results from this comparison
  is labelled
• negative disconfirmation if the product is worse
  than expected
• positive disconfirmation if better than expected
• simple confirmation if as expected
• (Oliver and DeSarbo in Brookes, 1995, p.10).

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Brookes Catalogue of Expectations
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Perceptions/Self-Perceptions of Benefit Claiments
Scrounging
Lowest ebb of society
Its not right that some people benefit from
services they havent helped to pay for

• Criminal

Degraded
Guilty
From work by NCSR(2005) Elam and Ritchie (1997)
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Knowledge
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MORIs Influences of Customer Satisfaction
(MORI 2002, p.8)
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Tacit Knowledge

• We know more than we can tell
• (Polanyi 1967)

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Identity
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Identity

• The customer of the public service is not the
  same as a customer of a service in the market.
  The customer does not necessarily buy the
  service the customer may have a right to receive
  the service customers may be refused a service
  because their needs may not meet the criteria
  laid down.
• Stewart Clark (in Sanderson 1992)

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Binary Distinctions of Citizen/Consumer
(Clarke et al. 2007, p.3)
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Identity Failure/Identity Reinforcement Construct
(authors own representation)
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Outcomes

• Much outcry, little outcome
• Aesop (c.620BC-c.560BC)

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Expectation/Outcome Complexities
(authors own representation)
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Methodological Approach

• "Blessed are the flexible,
• for they shall not be bent out of shape.
• - Anonymous

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Interview Timetable
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The Grounded Theory Data Dance
(adapted from Kelsey, 2003 in Warburton, 2005,
p.5)
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Criteria for Inclusion by Client Group
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Target Group Selection Criteria
(authors own representation)
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Actions to Reduce Sample Attrition