Article

Student dissatisfaction in Higher Education: a ‘fuzzy’ index approach

Details

Citation

Cook S, Watson D, Webb A & Webb R (2023) Student dissatisfaction in Higher Education: a ‘fuzzy’ index approach. Studies in Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2023.2258933

Abstract
The revamp of the National Student Survey (NSS) has led to the elimination of the final ‘overall satisfaction’ question for Higher Education Institutions in England. This paper develops an index approach that can effectively summarise student satisfaction, utilising a ‘fuzzy poverty’ methodology that assigns weights to dissatisfaction outcomes based on their correlation levels. We show how our dissatisfaction index enables a comprehensive sector-level analysis by combining NSS data with sector-wide data and further show the usefulness by presenting a case study. Our approach can be universally and unbiasedly applied to student surveys globally, while alleviating problems related to the removal of the overall satisfaction question in the UK.

Keywords
NSS; student satisfaction; dissatisfaction index; institutional comparison; higher education

Journal
Studies in Higher Education

StatusIn Press
Publication date online19/09/2023
Date accepted by journal09/02/2023
URLhttp://hdl.handle.net/1893/35832
PublisherInforma UK Limited
ISSN0307-5079
eISSN1470-174X

People (1)

Professor Robert Webb

Professor Robert Webb

Professor of Banking and Appl. Economics, Accounting & Finance