MEASURING SERVICE QUALITY - A TEST-RETEST RELIABILITY INVESTIGATION OF SERVQUAL

The SERVQUAL, scale has been widely used by both academics and practic ing managers to measure service quality but recent research has raised concerns about the reliability of SERVQUAL. Using the test-retest cor relation method, this paper assesses short - and long - range stabilit y of SERVQUAL. The results indicate that the SERVQUAL scale is not sta ble over time as revealed by the insignificant correlation between the test scores and retest scores. Although items in the expectation batt ery of the SERVQUAL scale remain fairly stable over time, the performa nce items are subject to instability even in a one-week test-retest in terval. These results seem to cast doubt on the usefulness of using SE RVQUAL performance items to measure service quality.