Social services are becoming more and more user-friendly in Korea, providing finances directly to users in order for them to autonomously choose the service options. The user-centered social services policy intends to let users make autonomous service...
Social services are becoming more and more user-friendly in Korea, providing finances directly to users in order for them to autonomously choose the service options. The user-centered social services policy intends to let users make autonomous service choices, increase number of service users, and provide diverse services that would meet various needs of people, etc. Providing choices to users ultimately enhances service quality because it facilitates the competition among service providers. Providing users with choices and satisfactory services by directly offering them finances requires a different approach to service quality control as well as successful quality control itself. Although diverse policies have been implemented in Korea to enhance user-centered social services, evaluations on the service quality still focus on performances of service providing institutions that still stress on things such as investments on their systems and instruments. Therefore, this study aims to develop a social service quality measurement model that will objectively evaluate the quality of services based on the degree of user choices, rights, autonomy, etc. sought by the users. The developed model in this study has been applied in places where social services have been provided in order to evaluate the quality of services and to make practical recommendations for the improvement of the services. The model has been developed through the following processes. First, a conceptual model (11 evaluation factors, 35 questions in four evaluation areas) had been developed by studying and analyzing existing literatures and indices for service quality measurement in order to constitute concepts, characteristics and factors of the quality measurement model for user-centered social services. Ten social service experts have been interviewed in detail. They were asked for their opinions on the service areas, factors, questions of the conceptual model in a way to assess the face validity and content validity of the conceptual model. After the interview, the model has been revised to include 10 factors, 29 questions in three evaluation areas . process quality, social quality and result quality. Second, 345 social service users have been interviewed to verify the validity of the final social service quality measurement model. The collected data from the interview were used to verify the credibility of the model and conduct an exploratory factor analysis by each quality area, resulting in four factors for process quality and three factors for social quality. At first, one question had been prepared for each three factors (satisfaction of the needs, overall satisfaction, and improvement of life quality) for result quality. However, the three factors were made into one. The exploratory factor analysis resulted in 8 factors, 28 questions in 3 areas. The confirmatory factor analysis was also conducted to verify the overall quality, the construct validity by each quality area, model fitness before completing the final model. Third, user characteristics (demographic and household characteristics) and service characteristics (service types and service usage characteristics) of the social services currently used by users have been identified based on the areas and the factors of the finalized model. The identified characteristics have been analyzed, while affecting factors have been assessed as the last verifying process. A technical analysis produced an average of 3.47 points for social service quality which was higher than the median value. For each quality area, process quality scored 3.67, social quality scored 3.44 and result quality scored 3.30, suggesting that the interviewees were most satisfied with the process quality and the least satisfied with the result quality. A factor analysis showed that household income level and a type of service providing institution affected the overall quality the most. While richer people were less satisfied with the service, domiciliary care centers were relatively well received by the people. This study intended to develop a social service quality measurement model that can objectively and systematically evaluate the current social services provided today. This study may be academically significant in that it investigated the concepts and theories important in the user-friendly services in order to specify concepts and scopes that should be reflected in the measurement of quality of social services, showing the multidimensionality of the quality of social services and suggesting the evaluation standards for the services. If the model developed in this study which reflects the conditions and situations in Korea is used in setting the policy direction of the user-centered social services, whether the quality services are being provided to users or not can be identified. Although only three types of services were analyzed in this study to develop the model, the model can be used for all types of domiciliary care services. Therefore, the model is expected to be used in designing specific policies that have not been considered yet and effectively be used in evaluating performances of services The study also proposes following practical recommendations for the improvement of the services: First, establishment of minimum quality standard and quality control institutions. Certain level of quality social services should be available anywhere. Second, variety of information on contents and characteristics of the services based on users’ knowledge level should be available. User-centered social services were introduced to give users options for high quality services and to induce service providing institutions to provide more sophisticated services. In order to protect users, appropriate measures for the quality services should be taken - providing users with information on effective use of users’ choices and rights as well as contents and characteristics of the services. Third, Service quality assessment by users need to be more reliable. More systematic and objective assessment methods should be employed in the quality assessment by uses who maintain friendly relationship with domiciliary service providers and service providing institutions. It is results from this reliable evaluation that needs to be reflected in the policy for the service quality management. Fourth, expansion of quality service system is needed. In order to cope with continuously changing needs of users, conducting reliable review on users’ needs based on expert diagnosis or decision and coming up with a personalized service plan are needed. Also, linking and adjusting various services within local community will diversify service contents, providing certain amount of services that may enhance quality of services.