The purpose of this study was to survey the parents with their children entrusted with national or public nurseries in Seongbuk-gu, Seoul for their satisfaction with and needs for nursing services and thereupon, analyze the differences of their satisf...
The purpose of this study was to survey the parents with their children entrusted with national or public nurseries in Seongbuk-gu, Seoul for their satisfaction with and needs for nursing services and thereupon, analyze the differences of their satisfaction depending on their age groups, academic backgrounds and monthly income levels, and thereby, find the ways to improve their satisfaction with nursery services. For this purpose, 206 parents with their children entrusted with 25 national and public children's houses in Seongbuk-gu, Seoul were sampled.
In order to achieve the goals of this study, relevant literature was reviewed and thereupon, a survey was conducted. The literature including preceding studies were reviewed to understand concept and importance of nurseries, their functions and types, quality of nursery services and problems of nursery programs. The data collected through the survey were processed using the SPSS program for frequency analysis and one-way ANOVA to determine the differences of satisfaction among parents depending on their age groups, academic backgrounds and income levels. The results of this study can be summarized as follows;
First, parents' considerations in their selection of children houses and their needs for them can be enumerated as follows; When they select a children's house, they tend to take into consideration the distance between the house and their home as well as its reputation. On the other hand, parents wish that the ratio of teachers to children would be lower. Most of the parents worry about their children's safety at the children's houses. Their satisfaction with the nurseries scored 3.97, which suggests that they are more or less satisfied with the nurseries. About 70% of the parents surveyed responded that nurseries should be operated by central or local administrations. The majority (55.3%) of parents answered that nursery programs should be obligatory. Lastly, about 37% of the parents wished that the poor facilities of nurseries would be reinstated.
Second, the results of analyzing parents' satisfaction with nursery services can be summed up as follows in terms of 8 sub-categories of the services;
First of all, parents are more or less satisfied with the nursery services after their children were entrusted with the nurseries. They tend to appreciate teachers' affection of children most, followed by nursery operators' philosophy and conviction. Parents are more satisfied with menu and snacks provided by the nurseries, while being satisfied more or less with their safety. In terms of educational activities, parents are much satisfied with yearly, monthly and weekly curriculum, basic living habit guidance and ordinary life training, but they are more or less satisfied with such physical environments of nurseries as basic facilities, indoor environmental facilities, educational facilities, play equipments, etc. On the other hand, in terms of nursery programs for parents, many parents feel that the communication between teachers and parents is very formal when children leave nurseries, but that parents' programs are more satisfactory. In terms of operation and management of nurseries, parents are least satisfied with the high ratio of teachers to children, while they are more or less satisfied with feedback of their opinions and level of nursing cost. Lastly, parents are more or less satisfied with use of community facilities and publicity of nursing facilities.
Third, the following suggestions are put forwards based on the above findings about parents' satisfaction with nurseries. It is necessary for nurseries to operate shuttle buses for the children, educate them on special skills, improve the poor facilities and consult parents more often to reflect their opinions in operation of nurseries. In addition, it is required of the government to increase the budgets for national and public nurseries in order to lower the ratio of teachers to children through recruitment of more teachers. Since parents want that the government should support nurseries more positively and that central or local administrations should be engaged in the operation of nurseries, it is deemed required of nurseries to rally up parents to urge the government to expand the support to nurseries.