Little is known about how people evaluate credence attributes, that is, those attributes which the consumer often cannot fully evaluate even after purchasing and consuming the product. And yet consumers struggle to evaluate quality in several important product categories dominated by credence attributes such as food safety, medical services, legal services, and pharmaceuticals, among others. The dissertation explores the processes by which people form quality evaluations of services high in credence attributes and the consequences of those evaluations. Drawing on the service quality, dual-process social information processing, expert-novice and risk literatures, I develop a conceptual model to illustrate how skill and motivation moderate the ways people seek and integrate observable information to infer unobservable quality. The influence of quality evaluations on outcome, satisfaction, value, and loyalty is mapped. The model is tested in the context of a classic credence service, health care services with two large datasets using structural equation modeling. Study 1 draws on an existing patient satisfaction database (6,280 records) to measure the sources and consequences of quality evaluations. Study 2 validates Study 1 findings and extends those findings to show the moderating roles of product expertise and perceived risk on quality evaluation processes. The second study is tested with 1,379 consumers (patients) drawn from an online consumer panel. The research suggests service quality in this context refers narrowly to the attributes of the core product (here, the physician‘s medical competence); interpersonal and organizational quality are associated with value, satisfaction and loyalty, rather than overall quality. Two paths to quality evaluations appear to exist. In the first, consumers integrate evidence of the physician‘s capabilities, practices, and prior outcomes to reach evaluations of technical quality. In the second path, consumers rely on a trust heuristic in which observed interpersonal and organizational quality signals are used to build trust in the physician; that trust, in turn, influences perceptions of technical quality. The trust heuristic appears to be used when the stakes are low and, counterintuitively, when the stakes are high, just when superior evaluations are most needed.

Thesis (M.A.)--Indiana University, 2007. / Title from screen (viewed on January 9, 2008). Department of Communication Studies, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Advisor(s): Stuart M. Schrader, Kim D. White-Mills, Elizabeth M. Goering, Jane E. Schultz. Includes vitae. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 85-94).

Diss. (sammanfattning) Umeå : Umeå universitet, 2006. / Härtill 4 uppsatser.

Thesis (doctoral)--Rijksuniversiteit te Utrecht.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin, 1971. / Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 59-62).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--School of Nursing. University of Missouri--Kansas City, 2005. / "A dissertation in nursing." Advisor: Steve Krantz. Typescript. Vita. Title from "catalog record" of the print edition Description based on contents viewed June 23, 2006. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 138-159 ). Online version of the print edition.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--RAND Graduate School, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references.

The primary objective of this study was to analyze dyadic verbal interactions and to determine whether they were associated with the roles of the participants. These "interactions occurred in the chronic paediatric health care delivery system between parents of handicapped children and physicians and between those same parents and other members of the health team. Additional objectives of this research included testing of the reliability of the Sequential Analysis of Verbal Interaction (SAVI) instrument and its utility in the health care system. Clinical data were obtained during regularly scheduled appointments in the form of audio-taped interviews using 37 parent-professional 'and 37 parent-paraprofessional dyads. A six-minute sample was selected from each interview tape, coded at three-second intervals, transcribed into the class of communication behaviour and analyzed. Subsequent to data collection, reliability and utility of the SAVI instrument were examined and determined to be appropriate for this study. The major finding of the study was that parents of handicapped children used different verbal messages and behaviours than professionals and paraprofessionals. The communication pattern for all three groups, using Agazarian's (1968) model was cross-purpose. Under a proposed model, adapted from Agazarian's, the parents' pattern of communication was considered to approximate the problem-solving pattern more closely. The conclusion drawn from this exploratory study was that very little of a personal nature was occurring in interpersonal communication, which in turn hindered the development of a problem-solving pattern of communication. An important direction for further research would be the testing of the predominance of the cross-purpose pattern of communication using a larger and more homogenous sample of professionals and paraprofessionals. / Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies / Graduate

Patients with the same underlying concern express this with different styles that predict preference for physician responses. One hundred primary care patients imagined having chest pain and selected from a videotape, the most likely response which they would tell their physician: (1) symptoms only - no disclosure of underlying concern; (2) symptoms and a "Clue" to an underlying concern; or (3) symptom with an explicit concern. Depending on their preferred expression, they were presented videotaped doctors responses to that disclosure and ranked their response preferences. Patients stating they would present with symptoms only (17%) preferred a biomedical question response; patients selecting a symptom and a clue (43%) were equally comfortable with a biomedical question, facilitation or, an exploration of the clue. Of patients presenting with an explicit concern (40%), most wanted the physician to acknowledge and explore the origins of that concern.

No description available.