As the modern society progress into an industrialized one, the demand in the women labor has skyrocketed. At the same time, the abrupt transformation into nuclear families has called for a new recognition of child care not as the women's responsibilit...
As the modern society progress into an industrialized one, the demand in the women labor has skyrocketed. At the same time, the abrupt transformation into nuclear families has called for a new recognition of child care not as the women's responsibility, but as that of the state and society. So the goal of child care in the nation has changed to increasing the family welfare by effectively supporting the economic and social activities of the protectors as well as securing the sound rearing of children and infants. The child care services has begun its new leap and development by the concept of protective education, the concept unlike the previous mere protection.
As a result, the day care services, following the leading ideology proposed by the Infant Care Act, have developed to be child welfare, women welfare, and family welfare services by providing a comprehensive service which takes into account not just child care, but their education, nutrition, health, safety, and the service for their parents.
So the study, in an effort to improve the quality of the child care for the parents by evaluating and grasping how the parents think and to which extent they are satisfied with the services, aims to attain the basic data by which a better child care service can be provided at day care centers.
The parents of the infants concerned were surveyed to estimate the quality of child care services and their satisfaction. The sample of the research, some 290 parents from 7 child care facilities that were randomly selected from 336 child care facilities on business in Ulsan Metropolitan City.
The survey was performed in the period from the 10th April to the 20th April, 2003. The researcher herself paid visits to each of the facilities and after giving the subjects some orientations, the surveys were performed. The collected data were put to an analysis by the SPSS FOR WINDOWS 10.0 program.
For the purpose of estimating the service quality and their opinions and their extent of satisfaction, the study performed a research to solve the problems on the basis of the theoretical analysis frame to prepare the basic data that are necessary in providing a new high-quality child and infant care services. Consequently, the study suggests the following 4 areas of improvement to upgrade the quality of the facilities and the services in the facilities:
First, the facilities need to improve the things which are crucial to the satisfaction over the service quality felt by the parents, which include the assuring teachers, parental safe feelings in their trusting their children, the teachers' manners, and teachers' capability of answering the questions asked by the parents.
Second, the facilities need to try to improve their concern for children's social and cognitive development, and their loving attitudes toward children which have the greatest influence on the customer satisfaction.
Third, as for the each subordinate factor of service quality and satisfaction, attentions are given especially to the following types of facilities. For responsiveness, improvements were called for especially in national and/or public child care facilities. For empathy, improvements were called for in big-size facilities. For the dimension of education, improvements were called for in private sectors. For environmental aspects, improvements were called for in the national and/or public facilities and in big facilities. And for the physical dimension, in big facilities, improvements were called for.
Fourth, since the satisfaction over the facility is commensurate with the quality of child care facility, they will have to try to improve the child care service quality and the satisfaction at the same time.