extended · article · 2003

The Rasch Model to Measure the Service Quality

Francesca De Battisti; Giovanna Nicolini; Silvia Salini; Benjamin D. Wright

It is known that the service quality is considered as a latent variable that derive from the combination of some others independent latent variables (dimensions) (Zanella 2001). The known variables (attributes), generally expressed by an ordinal scale (items), are observed through the administration of questionnaires to the users of the service, in order to measure those dimensions. Therefore questionnaires, like every measuring instrument, have to be calibrated. Statistical calibration is a procedure that permits to obtain the best approximation of the real measure as it eliminates the measurement errors. In the survey about service quality the “calibration of questionnaire ” would make understand what influences the opinion of subjects about the satisfaction on each attribute. Two factors randomly influence the propensity of a subject to one item rather than another: a specific attribu...