e-GovQual: A multiple-item scale for assessing e-government service quality

Abstract

A critical element in the evolution of governmental services through the internet is the development of sites that better serve the citizens' needs. To deliver superior service quality, we must first understand how citizens perceive and evaluate online. Citizen assessment is built on defining quality, identifying underlying dimensions, and conceptualizing measurements of these e-government services. In this article an e-gov service quality model (e-GovQual) is conceptualized and then a multiple-item scale for measuring e-gov service quality of governmental sites where citizens seek either information or service, is developed, refined, validated confirmed and tested.

Introduction

The subject of e-service and website quality is very rich in context of definitions, models, and measurement instruments. Nevertheless, different quality dimensions have been proposed and there is no consensus on the component dimensions. Collectively, the extant literature suggests that e-service quality is a multidimensional construct although the content of what constitutes e-service quality varies across studies (Zeithaml, Parasuraman, & Malhorta, 2002).

While early in the development of e-government services, issues of accessibility were troubling and while some issues do remain, there is a new awareness raised by scholars like Bertot and Jaeger (2006).

While the literature is not as robust as we would like to see, the authors believe this manuscript will begin to provide a conceptual foundation examining what is necessary for determining quality of e-government services. The provision of such a study will further enhance the e-government's ability to exploit and further attract more citizens to make their transactions through the web.

The objective of this study is to develop and validate an instrument to measure citizens' perceptions of service quality from e-government sites or portals. Throughout this article we describe the development, refinement, psychometric evaluation, potential applications and limitations of a multiple-item scale (e-GovQual) for measuring e-government service quality of governmental sites, where citizens seek either information or service. As already noticed by Aladwani and Palvia (2002) there are three generic steps common in all models' construction and verification that include (1) conceptualization, (2) design, and (3) normalization. In the first step a model is conceptualized after an extensive literature survey. The second step focuses on construct validity and reliability analysis. In this step the refining of the sample of items takes place—in order to come up with an initial scale—deciding on such operational issues as question types and question sequence. The third and last step concerns the effort to normalize the scale that has been developed. It involves the important steps of subsequent independent verification and validation. In our research's first step, conceptualization, after an extensive literature review as provided in Section 22, we classified 33 e-government quality attributes under six main quality dimensions: Ease of Use, Trust, Functionality of the Interaction Environment, Reliability, Content and Appearance of Information, and Citizen Support. After creating the conceptual model we needed to confirm whether the quality indicators selected describe the construct of e-government service quality. As a next step, a questionnaire based on these criteria was designed to elicit and assess information on preferences of the citizens when evaluating e-government service and governmental websites. The scale was produced following guidelines for measurement development proposed by Churchill (1979). In order to refine and evaluate the scale to measure e-government quality we collected 630 responses via an online survey that took place from February to June of 2007. We refined the scale, tested its reliability, and looked for a stable factor structure that resulted in 21 quality attributes classified under four quality dimensions: Reliability, Efficiency, Citizen Support and Trust (e-GovQual). A second online survey with 264 respondents took place from November 2007 to February 2008 in order to verify, validate, and finally to confirm the scale. This instrument developed under the above process would be valuable to researchers and practitioners interested in designing, implementing, and managing governmental websites.

The rest of the paper consists of five sections. The next section reviews prior research related to e-government, e-service quality, website quality, portal quality, and service quality measurements; the third section includes the conceptualization of the e-government model and identifies the variables that capture e-government service quality and describes the development of the conceptual model relating six essential factors of e-government service quality to citizens' perceptions; the fourth section and its various subsections describe the design and the normalization of the scale including the data collection and the steps involved in scale development—preliminary scale, refinement, validation, testing, etc.; the next section discusses applications of the proposed scale, limitations of the current study, and directions of future research; the paper ends with our conclusions from the study.