Troubling the notion of satisfied students

Gibbs, Paul and Dean, Aftab (2014) Troubling the notion of satisfied students. Higher Education Quarterly, 68 (4). pp. 416-431. ISSN 0951-5224 (doi:10.1111/hequ.12039)

Preview

PDF - Final accepted version (with author's formatting)
Download (202kB) | Preview

Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/hequ.12039

Abstract

This paper investigates whether students’ personal happiness is different from student satisfaction and considers if this may have consequences for university policy and management. It does this by comparing happiness and satisfaction in two cohorts of students from two United Kingdom universities. One is a distinctive research university and the other a university whose heritage has been in the polytechnic sector prior to its charter, referred to as a post-1992 university. The results, although preliminary, do appear to show that satisfied students are also happy students. However, what contributes to these states of being is different. The implication for institutional policy is discussed and a warning that to assume satisfaction (measured by satisfaction survey results) as happiness might be problematic in addressing improvement in the student experience.

Item Type:	Article
Research Areas:	A. > Centre for Education Research and Scholarship (CERS) A. > School of Health and Education
Item ID:	12962
Notes on copyright:	This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Gibbs, P. and Dean, A. (2014), Troubling the Notion of Satisfied Students. Higher Education Quarterly, 68: 416–431. doi:10.1111/hequ.12039, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/hequ.12039. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.
Useful Links:	Publisher Middlesex University Expert Profile
Depositing User:	Paul Gibbs
Date Deposited:	13 Feb 2014 06:22
Last Modified:	04 Apr 2019 06:04
URI:	https://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/id/eprint/12962

Actions (login required)

Edit Item

Altmetric

CORE (COnnecting REpositories)

Statistics

Full text downloads (NB count will be zero if no full text documents are attached to the record)

Downloads per month over the past year