ASSESSING SERVICE QUALITY IN LANGUAGE SCHOOLS: A MULTICRITERIA APPROACH

Abstract

This work presents a methodological approach based on two decision-aid methods to assist students in choosing language schools (LS) and LS managers in identifying the most critical criteria for their schools to retain current students and to attract new students. By conducting a experimental study based on the self-reported perceptions of a group of young Brazilian students, the AHP method and the Weighted Average (WA) method were used to measure the importance of the criteria and the performance of the LSs on each criterion and, finally, to order the LSs from best to worst. Quartile analysis was used to determine the most critical criteria in LSs. As a result, the teacher-related criteria, student-teacher-staff relationships, the teaching methodology, and accessibility for disabled people were considered the most important criteria. Both methods were satisfactory but the WA method was simpler to apply.