Study on factors affecting preschool education service quality: An empirical analysis based on fuzzy cognitive map and evidential theory
ISSN: 0368-492X
Article publication date: 27 August 2019
Issue publication date: 8 April 2020
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore the critical factors which affect the quality of preschool education service so that targeted and effective measures to improve service quality can be put forward.
Design/methodology/approach
Evidential theory is applied to aggregate experts’ knowledge, and a fuzzy cognitive map (FCM) model of preschool education service quality is established to further carry out a simulation for inference, thus figuring out the critical factors to improve service quality.
Findings
The simulation results show that the main body of supervision and environment of governments and policies are two critical factors affecting the quality of preschool education service. More emphasis should be put on these two aspects, and corresponding measures can be put forward so as to ensure the quality of preschool education service.
Originality/value
This paper proposes a new model based on FCM and evidential theory to study the factors affecting preschool education service quality.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors express sincere appreciation to the anonymous referees for their helpful comments to improve the quality of the paper.
Funding: The work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 71403109, the Humanities and Social Science Foundation of Ministry of Education under Grant number 19YJA880068, the Humanities and Social Sciences Foundation of Jiangsu Province under Grant 16JYC002 and Postgraduate Research & Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province under Grant number KYCX18_2301.
Citation
Xu, L. and Zhang, Y. (2020), "Study on factors affecting preschool education service quality: An empirical analysis based on fuzzy cognitive map and evidential theory", Kybernetes, Vol. 49 No. 4, pp. 1065-1081. https://doi.org/10.1108/K-08-2018-0442
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited