IMPORTANCE-SATISFACTION ANALYSIS OF LIBQUAL SERVICE QUALITY ATTRIBUTES IN THE SRI LANKAN CONTEXT

Service quality measuring tools and methods should be revisited to address the changing environments. Although there are criticisms, LibQUAL+ is a well-tested tool for validity and reliability in different continents and is suitable for the Sri Lankan university library context too. To measure the service quality in university libraries, LibQUAL survey items were selected and tested for their applicability using the Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) matrix with a randomly selected sample of 1,791 respondents. The sample consisted of 2,000 users including teachers and undergraduates selected from eight state universities in Sri Lanka. Results indicated that there was a significant gap between users’ expected quality and perceived quality (t (1,790) = 43.053, p<0 001). The IPA results showed that 13 service quality attributes related to ‘Library as Place’ and “Service Affect’ dimensions fell into quadrant II implying that those attributes are highly important and highly performed (satisfied). Four quality attributes fell into quadrant III while three attributes to quadrant IV. No variable was fallen into quadrant I indicating that no item was highly important and low performance. The IPA matrix is very helpful for librarians to evaluate service quality. Future studies should consider discovering more quality variables and more robust methods to evaluate service quality in turbulent environments.