Measuring Service Performance Reporting Quality by New Zealand Universities Using an Information Accessibility Index

Abstract

There has been a widely reported view that the quality of service performance reporting by New Zealand universities is in need of improvement. The purpose of this study is to measure the quality of service performance reporting as provided in the Statement of Service Performance by the university sector of New Zealand in the years 2000, 2002 and 2003. A new methodology is developed that complements existing methodologies employed in research addressing university reporting, specifically the Modified Accountability Disclosure Index (Coy et al. 1993) and the Performance Accountability Index (Coy and Dixon 2002). The Information Accessibility Index introduced here measures the clarity rather than the content of presentation. The rankings afforded by different indices are sensitive to the metric adopted. Future research might further explore the development of alternative methods to further exploit context specific differences between countries.