Resumen de Can students’ satisfaction indexes be applied the same way in different countries?
Ramón Álvarez, Danny Freira, Elena Vernazza, Helena Maria Baptista Alves
Student satisfaction indexes are important management tools for higher education institutions, and several studies have indicated generic models to measure them. However, the specific characteristics of education systems differ across countries;
therefore, models of student satisfaction may not be as generalizable as expected. This article aims to study the applicability of a model of student satisfaction within state higher education in two different situations: Portugal and Uruguay. The index of higher education student satisfaction developed by Alves and Raposo (2007b) is taken as a basis, and it is tested in Uruguay. The results show that when applied to the Uruguayan system, the model presents lower performance, with three non-significant relationships, in connection with the expectations and word of mouth construct. The remaining relationships are maintained in both systems but sometimes with very different weights.
