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© Proceedings of the Ruhuna Quality Assurance Sessions 2021 (RUQAS 2021)
st
21 September 2021

questionnaire consisted of three sections to assess the demographic features of the undergraduates,
perception of undergraduates towards the service quality of higher education and the overall rating of

the satisfaction level of the service. Service quality items were presented as statements and measured

using a five-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree). The reliability of the
questionnaire was measured using Cronbach’s alpha and it has given 0.7 Cronbach’s alpha value for

each questionnaire item.

The undergraduates of the Faculty of Agriculture, University of Ruhuna were selected as the
population of the study and they were from three different degree programs; namely BSc Agriculture

Resource Management and Technology, BSc Agribusiness Management and BSc Green Technology,

and from four different academic years. It comprises 260 first year students, 216 second year students,
243 third year students, and 143 fourth year students. An online survey was designed for the data

collection and the link was sent to 311 students of the faculty who were selected by the simple random
sampling method. The sample was selected proportionate to the students in each batch. The link of the

questionnaire survey was sent via their academic emails, and it was disabled after 14 days of

circulation. Secondary data were collected from research paper articles, journals, newspaper articles,
and other websites etc. The data were analyzed using SPSS statistical software and descriptive

statistics as well as inferential statistics were used while the Wilcoxon Signed Rank test was mainly
utilized as the analytical tool in this study.

Results, Discussion, and Conclusions

Considering the gender, the majority were females (80.7%) whereas males accounted only for 19.3%
of the sample. Taking the degree program into account, 59.5% comprised undergraduates who are

following BSc Agricultural Resource Management and Technology degree program while 26.7% were
from BSc Agribusiness Management degree program and the lowest number of respondents was from

BSc Green Technology degree program (13.8%).

Table 1 shows the results of the Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test obtained from responses concerning each
statement on the perception of the undergraduates towards the service quality of higher education

within the faculty of Agriculture, University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka. Service quality is measured using

six dimensions proposed by Abdullah (2006) in the HEdPERF scale. According to the results,
undergraduates believe the service of academic and non-academic staff of the faculty are valid and

significant (p=0.000). Students significantly consider that the hostel facilities, academic facilities,

ability of producing employable graduates and academic programs of the faculty are reputable
(p=0.000). Moreover, the results show that all the statements given to the respondents regarding the

access, program issues and understanding are proven as valid and significant (p=0.000). Accordingly,
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