A Comparative Study on the Importance of Dimensions of Educational Services at Zahedan University of Medical Sciences: Faculties and Students' Viewpoints

Introduction: There are differences between the recognition of service providers about the importance of dimensions of services، and its real importance asviewed by service receivers. This leads to planning and decision making on quality promotion in which the views of providers are more effective than those of the customers. In such circumstances, the quality of services is reduced in the customer,s viewpoint. This research aims to compare the importance of dimensions of educational service in the faculty members, and  the students' viewpoints.

Material: This cross-sectional descriptive research was performed in 2004 in Zahedan University of Medical Sciences. All the faculty members and 386 students were chosen as the research subjects. A questionnaire was used for data collection. For statistic analysis، descriptive and analytic statistics were employed.

Results: Empathy was the most important dimension from students' viewpoint which was ranked as the 4th factor in faculty members' view. The faculty members declared the most important dimension to be assurance that was ranked the third in students' viewpoint.

Conclusion: There is no dimension with the same rank among different dimensions of educational services between the students and faculty members. This leads the faculty members to advert dimensions which are less important in students' view، so this affects the quality of services from students' viewpoint. Therefore، should be taken in to account these differences in programming and resource allocation in order to improve the services provided, which is so important from the students' view.

Moreoues it seems neceas ary to desclibe the char a ctuistics of sewices to the students and identify at sow : cesale and what to expect from them. Moreover, it seems necessary to describe the characteristics of sew ices to the students and identify what sew ices are and what to expect from them.