Quality Perception with Attrakdiff Method: A Study in Higher Education

Abstract

The perceived quality is subjective and based on a number of factors, including the user’s own experience. In turn, higher education has become a service industry with divergences in short-term (commercial) or medium/ long-term (pedagogical) actions. Thus, an analysis of perceived quality was made using the Attrakdiff method with 282 students from the humanities, exact and health areas (97 of them in production engineering), 81 former students of production engineering and 47 professors, all from the same institution higher education, located in Recife, Brazil. We sought to analyze whether there was a divergence of perceptions. The analysis was performed using the Description of word pairs and the Diagram of Average Values. At the end of the research, in a comparative analysis, it was possible to perceive that teachers and alumni are the ones that have the best perceived quality of the service and the students are the most rigorous. However, in general, everyone has a perceived positive quality.