Cross-cultural invariance of measures of satisfaction and service quality

A dental setting is used to test the measurement equivalence of scales for satisfaction and service quality by using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). A 2 x 2 experimental design used levels of service quality and performance controlled and manipulated. US, English and French-Canadian subjects were chosen to test invariance of these measures. The sample consisted of 499 respondents from midwestern USA, Ontario and Quebec. Using CFA, findings indicate that some measures of satisfaction and service quality can be nonequivalent across cultures. Cultural differences were noted for invariant measures in assessing perceived quality, mostly in situations with high expectations and performance, with English Canadians perceiving lower service quality than US and French-Canadians subjects. In situations where expectations and performance were lower, English-Canadians perceived higher quality than US and French-Canadian respondents. Differences were found between English and French-Canadians in the four experimental settings. (C) 2002 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.