User satisfaction is a key theme in Information System research, with various studies emphasizing the importance of understanding and meeting user needs. The term “satisfaction” derives from “satisfy”, which has its roots in Latin. The term signals the senses of “contentment and appeasement” and the “action of gratifying”. It is described as a
Research based on information sciences has focused on the satisfaction of the needs and desires of users who utilize the system. As such, information science-based researchers have defined and conceptualized satisfaction based on developments in systems and other sciences regarding concepts such as needs/motives, attitude and intention/satisfaction
Shaqra University is one of the emerging universities in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It is located in the middle of the Kingdom. It is one of the biggest universities in the Arabic gulf region in terms of its huge geographic area. The university has nine campuses within the central region of the Kingdom. The university consists of twenty-four faculties. The colleges are distributed over nine cities, with each college having many departments and each department having various faculty members
Electronic services
The authors in
Accessing a greater customer base
Broadening user reach
Lowering of entry barrier to new services and cost of acquiring new users
Alternative communication channel to users
Increasing services to users
Enhancing perceived service image
Gaining competitive advantages
Enhancing transparency
Potential for increasing the user knowledge
The MAKKEN system is web-based and is available via a local area network. Two types of user can employ the system:
Administrative Employees
Faculty members
The users can access the system only via a university local network. All the users of the system must have a username and a password which is provided by the Deanship of Information Technology & Electronic Learning.
After logging-in to the system, the users can conduct various transactions such as applying for vacations and printing salary details as well as reviewing previous transactions such as financial procedures and displaying personal and employee data. The system also helps a manager to manage their employees and other faculty members. The managers can accept/reject vacation requests, following online requests. The system also allows them to view information about their employees and other faculty members.
Assess factors that impact on users’ satisfaction with the Makken system in Shaqra University, based on the factors of information quality, system quality and service quality.
Assess users’ satisfaction with the Makken system in Shaqra University.
The main research questions were:
Q1: What factors impact users’ satisfaction with the Makken system in Shaqra University?
Q2: Are users satisfied with the Makken system in Shaqra university?
The sub-research questions are as follows:
Does the information quality (IQ) impact users’ satisfaction with the Makken system in Shaqra University?
Does system quality (SQ) impact users’ satisfaction with the Makken system in Shaqra University?Does service quality (SV) impact users’ satisfaction with the Makken system in Shaqra University?
Research has been conducted by earlier researchers
In
While the previous example implemented some statistical tools to evaluate e-learning systems, a group-decision approach was followed by Gwo-Jen Hwang et al.
Some researchers have attempted to identify particular student characteristics or other factors that can be used to predict whether a student might drop out of, or otherwise fail to achieve satisfactory results in an e-learning course
The DeLone and McLean (D&M) IS success model is a theory which seeks to provide a comprehensive understanding of IS success by identifying, describing, and explaining the relationships among six of the most critical dimensions of success against which information systems are commonly evaluated
Information Quality characterizes the outputs offered by the IS, namely, accuracy, timeliness, and completeness. Information quality captures the e-commerce content issue in an elaborate manner. In this factor, web content should be personalized, complete, relevant, easy to understand, and secure if prospective buyers or suppliers are to initiate transactions via the Internet and return to a site on a regular basis
Cognitive information processing theory is an extension of the constructivist model, based on a model of memory. It proposes processes and structures through which an individual receives and stores information and focuses on cognitive processes during learning. These involve processing instructional input to develop, test, and refine mental models until they are sufficiently elaborated upon and reliable to be effective in novel problem-solving situations
In this study, the D&M IS success model was used with some modifications to relationships between its factors to achieve the study's objectives, namely, to assess factors (information quality, system quality and service quality) that impact on users’ satisfaction with the Makken System in Shaqra University.
H1: Information quality (IQ) has positive impact on user satisfaction with the Makken system.
H2: System quality (SQ) has positive impact on user satisfaction with the Makken system.
H3: Service quality (SV) has positive impact on user satisfaction with the Makken system.
This study used a questionnaire to collect the data about the advantages for researchers such as saving money, time and because it is an appropriate tool for access to female and male participants alike
The questionnaire consisted of three parts. Part one, an invitation to participate in this research, contained general information about the research and its aims, and some information about ethical concerns to obtain informed consent from participants. Part two related to demographic characteristics and part three listed items related to factors that may impact on users’ satisfaction. All factors were measured using a five-level Likert-type scale. Participants were asked to choose from 5 = Strongly Agree, 4 =Agree, 3 = Neutral, 2 = Disagree, 1= Strongly Disagree.
The population in this study was all Shaqra university staff (academic members and administrative staff) in two sections, male and female. We used a snowballing selection technique, which is defined as being “based on social network logic whereby people are linked by a set of social relationships and contacts”
As shown in the
Information | Number of participants | Percentage of sample | |
---|---|---|---|
Gender | Male | 88 | 72.1 |
Female | 34 | 27.9 | |
Total | 122 | 100.0 | |
Employee type | Faculty member | 97 | 79.5 |
Administrative employee | 25 | 20.5 | |
Total | 122 | 100.0 | |
Working Place | Main campus | 45 | 36.9 |
Other campuses | 77 | 63.1 | |
Total | 122 | 100.0 | |
Experience of E-services | Yes | 120 | 98.4 |
No | 2 | 1.6 | |
Total | 122 | 100.0 |
Cronbach Alpha | Number of items | Section |
---|---|---|
0.883 | 5 | Information quality (IQ) |
0.911 | 3 | System quality (SQ) |
0.886 | 5 | service quality (SV) |
0.953 | 3 | User Satisfaction (US) |
0.966 | 16 | Total |
According to
The structural equation model (SEM) examined three hypotheses presented in
Hypothesis | Hypothesis statement |
---|---|
H1 | Information quality (IQ) has a positive impact on user satisfaction with the Makken system. |
H2 | System quality (SQ) has a positive impact on user satisfaction with the Makken system. |
H3 | Service quality (SV) has a positive impact on user satisfaction with the Makken system. |
The results after conducting the Maximum Likelihood estimation are presented in
Path | Hypothesis | Hypothesis statement | Path weight Beta β | Overall results |
---|---|---|---|---|
IQ →US | H1 | Information quality (IQ) has a positive impact on user satisfaction with the Makken system. | 0 .277 | Significant P<0.001 |
SQ → US | H2 | System quality (SQ) has a positive impact on user satisfaction with the Makken system. | 0 .246 | Significant P<0.001 |
SV → US | H3 | Service quality (SV) has a positive impact on user satisfaction with the Makken system. | 0 .476 | Significant P<0.001 |
The results of the preliminary analysis revealed that most of the participants tended to give high ratings to items (positive responses) related to user satisfaction (US), usually in the agree (4) to strongly agree (5) interval. For this reason, both the items and the associated scale scores were somewhat negatively skewed as seen in
Statistics | ||
Mean user satisfaction (US) | ||
N | Valid | 122 |
Missing | 0 | |
Skewness | -.319 | |
Std. Error of Skewness | .218 | |
Kurtosis | -1.001 | |
Std. Error of Kurtosis | .433 |
Based on these results, we can conclude that users were satisfied, but not completely satisfied, with the Makken system in Shaqra Unversity.
In order to adopt new technologies to achieve digital transformation, Shaqra University adopted the Makken System to facilitate management activities and provide all management transactions electronically for their staff. This study aimed to assess factors that impact on users’ satisfaction with the Makken system and assess their satisfaction with the Makken system in Shaqra Unversity. The findings of this study were that Information quality (IQ), System quality (SQ) and Service quality (SV) had positive impacts on user satisfaction with the Makken system. It was also found that most users were satisfied with the Makken system in Shaqra Unversity. Based on these results, Shaqra University should continue to provide other e-services and improve existing systems.
In future, studies could use more factors to measure users’ satisfaction such as electronic service quality using E-S-QUAL and E-RecS-QUAL scales. Also, it could increase sample size to make a good generalization. Conceptual framework for this study was designed to assess the users' satisfaction. Future studies could focus on more topics such as technical challenges and problems of new systems by using other methods such as semi structured interviews to explore users' perspectives. Also, the future study could use other statistical tests such as correlation test and multiple regression.