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Policy Briefs Determining Citizen Satisfaction with Local Public Education in Indonesia: The Significance of Actual Service Quality and Governance Conditions1 No. 3 - 2007
International evidence suggests that there are significant concerns about the quality of public education in Indonesia. Despite this, results from the recent Governance and Decentralization Survey show that Indonesians seem quite satisfied with local public education services. About 87 percent of respondents claim to be at least somewhat satisfied with public primary education. This paper argues that reported satisfaction with education services may, however, be exaggerated due to courtesy bias, low expectations, and optimistic predispositions.
Explaining Citizen Satisfaction The probability that households are satisfied with local public education services is explained, in part, by plausible indicators of actual quality of services. This paper shows that the probability of being satisfied increases along with the percentage of classrooms that are in good condition and school accessibility via road. In addition, the likelihood of being satisfied declines
as the percentage of teachers that are civil servants and student-teacher ratios rise. Finally, as the age of teachers, the number of students per classroom, and the number of instruction hours increases, the probability that households are satisfied first increases and then declines. The odds of being satisfied with local education are also related to various household sociodemographics, household socio-economic status, and location of residence. The number of years that the household head has lived in the area positively influences the probability of being satisfied. Non-Muslim headed households are relatively less likely to be satisfied. The probability that households are satisfied increases with the head’s education level. Households that currently have at least one child in school are generally more likely to be satisfied than those households that do not. As relative socio-economic status rises, the probability of being satisfied with education declines. Households that live in Sumatra, Kalimantan, NTB and NTT, and Eastern
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Indonesia are less likely to be satisfied than their counterparts elsewhere. Finally, the research here also demonstrates that governance conditions are important in determining the likelihood of being satisfied with local public education. The empirical evidence shows that the probability of citizen satisfaction with education increases along with perceptions of budget transparency and trust. The odds of satisfaction decline as the number of citizens that complain to the community development council increases but rise as those complaints are seen to be adequately addressed. Perception of corruption in local public education administration has a strong and negative influence on the probability of being satisfied. The result that the governance environment is a significant determinant of the likelihood of being satisfied with public education is quite robust vis-à-vis the particular specification of relevant variables. That is, the paper shows that governance conditions have significant marginal effects on the probability of being satisfied regardless of whether pertinent variables are assumed to be exogenously or endogenously determined. The endogenous specification leads to a substantially increased estimated impact of governance on the probability of satisfaction, however, as well as enhanced estimated marginal effects of other independent variables included in the analysis. Overall, the model that endogenously specifies governance would appear to lead to much more satisfactory results.
Policy Implications From a service evaluation point of view, the overall output of the examination here would suggest
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caution regarding the use and interpretation of currently popular “score card” initiatives, which seek to employ citizen satisfaction as a close proxy for actual quality of services. The results from this study suggest that it certainly seems reasonable to assume that the probability of citizen satisfaction is related to the actual quality of services. However, the likelihood that citizens are satisfied is also influenced by many other factors such as expectations, predispositions, and governance conditions. If score card efforts do not control for such variables, then derived results will be biased, at least to some extent. In addition, most score card initiatives would seem to be based on interviews with non-randomly selected subjects and this may further bias outcomes and cloud interpretations. The finding that “governance matters” is perhaps not surprising in and of itself. The general result accords well with the conventional wisdom among analysts and policy-makers that good governance conditions positively influence social outcomes and economic growth. The novelty of the analysis here is that it provides some empirical evidence to demonstrate that governance matters for the likelihood that citizens are satisfied with public service delivery, holding outcomes the actual quality of public services constant. This must surely constitute a conclusion of which local politicians and service providers might usefully take note.
Future Research Needs Future research on determining satisfaction with public service delivery might do well to focus on specifying and collecting data on a broader range of service quality indicators, including those related to outputs and outcomes. Additional and higher quality data on outputs and outcomes
Determining Citizen Satisfaction with Local Public Education in Indonesia: The Significance of Actual Service Quality and Governance Condition
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would allow for more direct determination of the relationship between satisfaction and actual service quality, that is, without relying on the assumption that various inputs to service delivery necessarily lead to desired service results. Another objective of future research might be to develop indicators that more precisely measure expectations and predispositions. In the current analysis variables related to socio-demographics, socio-economic status, and location of residence have all been used to broadly proxy and control for both, obscuring two competing theoretical views. Better specified expectations and predisposition variables would allow researchers to be more specific about the influence of such variables on satisfaction.
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Finally, the future research agenda on explaining satisfaction with public services should also concentrate some of its efforts on improving the information base related to local governance environments.The collection of data on additional aspects of governance, such as those related to political and legal dimensions, for example, would be important for the development of a fuller representation of the concept and its significance in explaining relevant outcomes. More broadly, additional work on specifying and collecting data on objective indicators of governance conditions, as contrasted with perceptions of same, while quite difficult, would be most helpful in enhancing the robustness of these types of analyses in developing countries and elsewhere.
Lewis, B. D. and Pattinasarany, D. Determining Citizen Satisfaction with Local Public Education in Indonesia: The Significance of Actual Service Quality and Governance Conditions. DSF, November 2007. The full report can be downloaded from www.dsfindonesia.org. The views expressed in this paper are solely those of its author(s).
Determining Citizen Satisfaction with Local Public Education in Indonesia: The Significance of Actual Service Quality and Governance Condition
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