QUALITY EVALUATION OF DENTAL SERVICE FOR CHILDREN FROM THE PARENTS' POINT OF VIEW Aistė Kavaliauskienė Supervisor Antanas Šidlauskas, Assoc. Prof., D.D.S., PhD., Department of Social Medicine, faculty of Public Health, Kaunas University of Medicine. – Kaunas, 2005. �� P.74 Aim of the study – to evaluate the quality of dental services for children from the parents’ point of view. Methods. The anonymous questionnaire survey was performed among 280 parents of children visiting their pediatric dentists or orthodontists in four Kaunas public health care institutions. The research methodology used the questionnaire based upon SERVQUAL instrument. Two sets of questions, one relating to the respondents’ expectations, the other relating to the respondents’ perceptions of a particular aspect of service quality, comprised the questionnaire. The perceived gaps between expectations and perceptions were analysed regarding five service quality dimensions (tangibles, responsiveness, reliability, assurance, empathy). Likert-type scales were used for the evaluation of the examined characteristics. The statistical package SPSS version 11.0 for Windows was used to conduct data analysis. Results. There was a statistically significant difference between the parents’ expectations (mean score 4,31±0,36) compared with their perceptions (mean score 3,86±0,46) of the dental service provided. The largest quality gap was observed in characteristic regarding reliability while the smallest gap concerned... [to full text]