Predictors of student satisfaction in a large psychology undergraduate program.

Abstract

Psychology is one of the most popular undergraduate majors in North America, yet few studies have examined psychology majors' views of their degree program. The purpose of the present study was to identify the factors that contribute to students' satisfaction with their psychology degree. The participants were psychology majors (N ϭ 237) graduating from a large Canadian undergraduate program. Three cohorts of graduating students (classes of 2013, 2014, and 2015) completed a comprehensive exit survey. Multiple regression analyses indicated that key predictors of students' satisfaction with their degree program included the quality of teaching in lectures, level of academic challenge, and opportunities for research experience. Additional analyses showed that students with a research thesis requirement reported significantly higher satisfaction than students in a conventional course-based major. These and other findings lead to several recommendations for increasing students' satisfaction in psychology undergraduate programs.

Education Service Quality, Value and Satisfaction on Student Customer Intentions and Behaviour

“…One reason for the difference in expectations could be the fact that a part-time student cannot fully appreciate all the facilities that the full-time students have more time to access (Moro-Egido and Panades, 2010). Of course, there can be various other reasons for the part-time students' more negative evaluations of the education service quality performance, including the greater imbalance between the competing demands of work and college that they experience, and the more personal and family challenges (Sears et al, 2017) they undergo, compared to full-time students. Despite this, the part-time students made significantly more recommendations of the service to others (H14), including work colleagues.…”

“…The strongest approach to this would be longitudinally following the same students through their university life. In addition, although this study argues that students are not normally knowledgeable enough about the subject-related educational provision to assess it (Driscoll and Wicks, 1998), and so they rely more on the tangibles to draw conclusions about overall quality (Hoffman and Kretovics, 2004), a future study could examine student perspectives on education provision while taking into account their views on the intangibles like core subject content and career information relating to the taught programme, Sears et al (2017) did this with a similar sample to the current study, comprising of undergraduate psychology students in Canada.…”

“…As well as educational service quality factors, various student characteristics could have an influence on student satisfaction. For example, it has been found that parttime students have lower satisfaction levels than full-time students, with possible reasons being limited time for a part-time student to fully appreciate all the university facilities (Moro-Egido and Panades, 2010), greater imbalance between the competing demands of work and university, more personal and family challenges (Sears et al, 2017), compared to full-time students. The amount of time spent within the university may also affect satisfaction, with first and final year students seeing key elements of education service provision differently (Oldfield and Baron, 2000).…”

Satisfiers and Dissatisfiers for International Vocational Education Students

“…Even for relatively brief service encounters, these expectations and evaluations are multidimensional, as indicated by the ServQual instrument (Parasuraman, Berry, & Zeithaml, 1991), which operationalizes expectancy-disconfirmation along five dimensions: reliability (in performing the service to standard), assurance (trust in the provider's knowledge; their courtesy), tangibles (facilities, materials and personnel), empathy ("caring, individualized attention"), and responsiveness ("willingness to help"; Parasuraman et al, 1991, p. 41). In exploring the satisfaction of international students, such multidimensional assessment reveals a broad range of factors relevant to their experience in the host country (Sears et al, 2017), some of which lie beyond what an institution would traditionally consider to be the service they provide. These may include the way that students are received outside the institution by members of the host community, the local availability of familiar foods, and off-campus shopping and entertainment.…”

College students’ satisfaction and sense of belonging: differences between underrepresented groups and the majority groups

“…There are various aspects that might contribute to student satisfaction. Students' expectation of college life (Arambewela and Hall 2009), teaching quality (Sears et al 2017), socializing and sense of community (Andrea and Benjamin 2013), as well as students' perceived stress, humor and social skills (Rezaei and Jeddi 2020) were found to be associated with their overall satisfaction. Particularly, Elliott and Shin (2002) found that valuable course content, excellence of instruction, and being able to take desired classes are important variables and significantly predicted students' satisfaction.…”