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Ensemble Learning with Support Vector Machines for Bond Rating (회사채 신용등급 예측을 위한 SVM 앙상블학습)

  • Kim, Myoung-Jong
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.18 no.2
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    • pp.29-45
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    • 2012
  • Bond rating is regarded as an important event for measuring financial risk of companies and for determining the investment returns of investors. As a result, it has been a popular research topic for researchers to predict companies' credit ratings by applying statistical and machine learning techniques. The statistical techniques, including multiple regression, multiple discriminant analysis (MDA), logistic models (LOGIT), and probit analysis, have been traditionally used in bond rating. However, one major drawback is that it should be based on strict assumptions. Such strict assumptions include linearity, normality, independence among predictor variables and pre-existing functional forms relating the criterion variablesand the predictor variables. Those strict assumptions of traditional statistics have limited their application to the real world. Machine learning techniques also used in bond rating prediction models include decision trees (DT), neural networks (NN), and Support Vector Machine (SVM). Especially, SVM is recognized as a new and promising classification and regression analysis method. SVM learns a separating hyperplane that can maximize the margin between two categories. SVM is simple enough to be analyzed mathematical, and leads to high performance in practical applications. SVM implements the structuralrisk minimization principle and searches to minimize an upper bound of the generalization error. In addition, the solution of SVM may be a global optimum and thus, overfitting is unlikely to occur with SVM. In addition, SVM does not require too many data sample for training since it builds prediction models by only using some representative sample near the boundaries called support vectors. A number of experimental researches have indicated that SVM has been successfully applied in a variety of pattern recognition fields. However, there are three major drawbacks that can be potential causes for degrading SVM's performance. First, SVM is originally proposed for solving binary-class classification problems. Methods for combining SVMs for multi-class classification such as One-Against-One, One-Against-All have been proposed, but they do not improve the performance in multi-class classification problem as much as SVM for binary-class classification. Second, approximation algorithms (e.g. decomposition methods, sequential minimal optimization algorithm) could be used for effective multi-class computation to reduce computation time, but it could deteriorate classification performance. Third, the difficulty in multi-class prediction problems is in data imbalance problem that can occur when the number of instances in one class greatly outnumbers the number of instances in the other class. Such data sets often cause a default classifier to be built due to skewed boundary and thus the reduction in the classification accuracy of such a classifier. SVM ensemble learning is one of machine learning methods to cope with the above drawbacks. Ensemble learning is a method for improving the performance of classification and prediction algorithms. AdaBoost is one of the widely used ensemble learning techniques. It constructs a composite classifier by sequentially training classifiers while increasing weight on the misclassified observations through iterations. The observations that are incorrectly predicted by previous classifiers are chosen more often than examples that are correctly predicted. Thus Boosting attempts to produce new classifiers that are better able to predict examples for which the current ensemble's performance is poor. In this way, it can reinforce the training of the misclassified observations of the minority class. This paper proposes a multiclass Geometric Mean-based Boosting (MGM-Boost) to resolve multiclass prediction problem. Since MGM-Boost introduces the notion of geometric mean into AdaBoost, it can perform learning process considering the geometric mean-based accuracy and errors of multiclass. This study applies MGM-Boost to the real-world bond rating case for Korean companies to examine the feasibility of MGM-Boost. 10-fold cross validations for threetimes with different random seeds are performed in order to ensure that the comparison among three different classifiers does not happen by chance. For each of 10-fold cross validation, the entire data set is first partitioned into tenequal-sized sets, and then each set is in turn used as the test set while the classifier trains on the other nine sets. That is, cross-validated folds have been tested independently of each algorithm. Through these steps, we have obtained the results for classifiers on each of the 30 experiments. In the comparison of arithmetic mean-based prediction accuracy between individual classifiers, MGM-Boost (52.95%) shows higher prediction accuracy than both AdaBoost (51.69%) and SVM (49.47%). MGM-Boost (28.12%) also shows the higher prediction accuracy than AdaBoost (24.65%) and SVM (15.42%)in terms of geometric mean-based prediction accuracy. T-test is used to examine whether the performance of each classifiers for 30 folds is significantly different. The results indicate that performance of MGM-Boost is significantly different from AdaBoost and SVM classifiers at 1% level. These results mean that MGM-Boost can provide robust and stable solutions to multi-classproblems such as bond rating.

Deep Learning-based Professional Image Interpretation Using Expertise Transplant (전문성 이식을 통한 딥러닝 기반 전문 이미지 해석 방법론)

  • Kim, Taejin;Kim, Namgyu
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.26 no.2
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    • pp.79-104
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    • 2020
  • Recently, as deep learning has attracted attention, the use of deep learning is being considered as a method for solving problems in various fields. In particular, deep learning is known to have excellent performance when applied to applying unstructured data such as text, sound and images, and many studies have proven its effectiveness. Owing to the remarkable development of text and image deep learning technology, interests in image captioning technology and its application is rapidly increasing. Image captioning is a technique that automatically generates relevant captions for a given image by handling both image comprehension and text generation simultaneously. In spite of the high entry barrier of image captioning that analysts should be able to process both image and text data, image captioning has established itself as one of the key fields in the A.I. research owing to its various applicability. In addition, many researches have been conducted to improve the performance of image captioning in various aspects. Recent researches attempt to create advanced captions that can not only describe an image accurately, but also convey the information contained in the image more sophisticatedly. Despite many recent efforts to improve the performance of image captioning, it is difficult to find any researches to interpret images from the perspective of domain experts in each field not from the perspective of the general public. Even for the same image, the part of interests may differ according to the professional field of the person who has encountered the image. Moreover, the way of interpreting and expressing the image also differs according to the level of expertise. The public tends to recognize the image from a holistic and general perspective, that is, from the perspective of identifying the image's constituent objects and their relationships. On the contrary, the domain experts tend to recognize the image by focusing on some specific elements necessary to interpret the given image based on their expertise. It implies that meaningful parts of an image are mutually different depending on viewers' perspective even for the same image. So, image captioning needs to implement this phenomenon. Therefore, in this study, we propose a method to generate captions specialized in each domain for the image by utilizing the expertise of experts in the corresponding domain. Specifically, after performing pre-training on a large amount of general data, the expertise in the field is transplanted through transfer-learning with a small amount of expertise data. However, simple adaption of transfer learning using expertise data may invoke another type of problems. Simultaneous learning with captions of various characteristics may invoke so-called 'inter-observation interference' problem, which make it difficult to perform pure learning of each characteristic point of view. For learning with vast amount of data, most of this interference is self-purified and has little impact on learning results. On the contrary, in the case of fine-tuning where learning is performed on a small amount of data, the impact of such interference on learning can be relatively large. To solve this problem, therefore, we propose a novel 'Character-Independent Transfer-learning' that performs transfer learning independently for each character. In order to confirm the feasibility of the proposed methodology, we performed experiments utilizing the results of pre-training on MSCOCO dataset which is comprised of 120,000 images and about 600,000 general captions. Additionally, according to the advice of an art therapist, about 300 pairs of 'image / expertise captions' were created, and the data was used for the experiments of expertise transplantation. As a result of the experiment, it was confirmed that the caption generated according to the proposed methodology generates captions from the perspective of implanted expertise whereas the caption generated through learning on general data contains a number of contents irrelevant to expertise interpretation. In this paper, we propose a novel approach of specialized image interpretation. To achieve this goal, we present a method to use transfer learning and generate captions specialized in the specific domain. In the future, by applying the proposed methodology to expertise transplant in various fields, we expected that many researches will be actively conducted to solve the problem of lack of expertise data and to improve performance of image captioning.

The Study of Metrics development for Entrepreneurial Program Effectiveness (청소년 창업교육프로그램 효과성 측정지표 개발 연구)

  • Byun, Youngjo;Kim, Myung Seuk;Yang, Young Seok
    • Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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    • v.9 no.4
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    • pp.77-85
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    • 2014
  • A goal of Bizcool entrepreneurship education targeting on the youth falls on letting understand the process of starts-up, enhance entrepreneurship will and their business creativities rather than training trivial starts-up skills such as writing business plan for successful starts-up. The effects of education enable Bizcoo students to recognize rightly the concept of starts-up training and lead to spread out demand for entrepreneurship education. The feedback check-up for how entrepreneurship education affects students getting through of it is necessary and possible to bring its' improvement alternatives. Despite of such highlight, not many measuring tools and indexes of evaluating an effectiveness of entrepreneurship education are developed and studied up until. This research suggests for the optimal indexes for them. In specific, this research 49 the first question sets of evaluating an effectiveness of entrepreneurship education classified 3 large categories and 11 following sub categories each of them such as entrepreneurship orientation, creativity, entrepreneurship preparing activities etc,. representing embedding education effects though entrepreneurship education. This research carry out the empirical survey research utilizing driven question sets against 5 different Bizcools sampling 287 students. The survey research delivers the final 3 large categories and 8 following sub categories(Innovativeness, risk-taking, problem-solving potent, cooperative decision-making potent, efficient behavior capacity, data collecting potent, career search, starts-up search and preparation), and 38 measuring indexes by search and confirming factor analysis. This research never drop the confidence test over each indexes and obtain the proper figures. Last but not least, this research confirm the gap between starts-up club members and non members as to an effectiveness of entrepreneurship education and 9 different indexes.

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Qualitative Inquiry on Ways to Improve Science Instruction and Assessment for Raising High School Students' Positive Experiences on Science (고등학생의 과학긍정경험 향상을 위한 교수학습 및 평가 개선 방안에 대한 질적 탐구)

  • Kwak, Youngsun;Shin, Youngjoon;Kang, Hunsik;Lee, Sunghee;Lee, Il;Lee, Soo-Young;Ha, Jihoon
    • Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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    • v.40 no.3
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    • pp.337-346
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    • 2020
  • In this study, we investigated the characteristics of students participating in Science Core high schools classes and their relevance to Positive Experiences on Science (hereinafter, PES), and factors causing PES, presented by the students of Science Core high schools. A total of 20 students and five teachers in four regions across the country participated in the in-depth interview, which were conducted with the focus group of students first, and then in-depth interviews with teachers. Based on the interview results, we explored teaching and learning experiences helpful to the PES, assessment experiences resulting in the PES, and ways to support Science Core high schools to enhance their PES. Students and teachers of Science Core high schools argued that students' participation will increase only if they engage in classes while drawing attention within the range that students can understand, students' PES such as scientific interest can be improved through experiments in which students choose topics or design their own exploration process, science competencies such as science problem solving ability and scientific thinking ability should be developed through exploratory experiment activities that fit the nature of science, etc. In addition, regarding ways to improve and support Science Core high schools to enhance PES, securing science class hours, restructuring the contents of science elective courses, and necessity of maintaining Science Core high schools are suggested. Based on the research results of science high school students' PES, ways to improve the PES of general high school students are discussed.

Definition and Division in Intelligent Service Facility for Integrating Management (지능화시설의 통합운영관리를 위한 정의 및 구분에 관한 연구)

  • PARK, Jeong-Woo;YIM, Du-Hyun;NAM, Kwang-Woo;KIM, Jin-Young
    • Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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    • v.19 no.4
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    • pp.52-62
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    • 2016
  • Smart City is urban development for complex problem solving that provides convenience and safety for citizens, and it is a blueprint for future cities. In 2008, the Korean government defined the construction, management, and government support of U-Cities in the legislation, Act on the Construction, Etc. of Ubiquitous Cities (Ubiquitous City Act), which included definitions of terms used in the act. In addition, the Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport has established a "ubiquitous city master plan" considering this legislation. The concept of U-Cities is complex, due to the mix of informatization and urban planning. Because of this complexity, the foundation of relevant regulations is inadequate, which is impeding the establishment and implementation of practical plans. Smart City intelligent service facilities are not easy to define and classify, because technology is rapidly changing and includes various devices for gathering and expressing information. The purpose of this study is to complement the legal definition of the intelligent service facility, which is necessary for integrated management and operation. The related laws and regulations on U-City were analyzed using text-mining techniques to identify insufficient legal definitions of intelligent service facilities. Using data gathered from interviews with officials responsible for constructing U-Cities, this study identified problems generated by implementing intelligent service facilities at the field level. This strategy should contribute to improved efficiency management, the foundation for building integrated utilization between departments. Efficiencies include providing a clear concept for establishing five-year renewable plans for U-Cities.

A Study on Outplacement Countermeasure and Retention Level Examination Analysis about Outplacement Competency of Special Security Government Official (특정직 경호공무원의 전직역량에 대한 보유수준 분석 및 전직지원방안 연구)

  • Kim, Beom-Seok
    • Korean Security Journal
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    • no.33
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    • pp.51-80
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    • 2012
  • This study is to summarize main contents which was mentioned by Beomseok Kim' doctoral dissertation. The purpose of this study focuses on presenting the outplacement countermeasure and retention level examination analysis about outplacement competency of special security government official through implement of questionnaire method. The questionnaire for retention level examination including four groups of outplacement competency and twenty subcategories was implemented in the object of six hundered persons relevant to outplacement more than forty age and five grade administration official of special security government officials, who have outplacement experiences as outplacement successors, outplacement losers, and outplacement expectants, in order to achieve this research purpose effectively. The questionnaire examination items are four groups of outplacement competency and twenty subcategories which are the group of knowledge competency & four subcategories including expert knowledge, outplacement knowledge, self comprehension, and organization comprehension, the group of skill competency & nine subcategories including job skill competency, job performance skill, problem-solving skill, reforming skill, communication skill, organization management skill, crisis management skill, career development skill, and human network application skill, the group of attitude-emotion competency & seven subcategories including positive attitude, active attitude, responsibility, professionalism, devoting-sacrificing attitude, affinity, and self-controlling ability, and the group of value-ethics competency & two subcategories including ethical consciousness and morality. The respondents highly regard twenty-two outplacement competency and they consider themselves well-qualified for the subcategories valued over 4.0 such as the professional knowledge, active attitude, responsibility, ethics and morality while they mark the other subcategories below average still need to be improved. Thus, the following is suggestions for successful outplacement. First, individual effort is essential to strengthen their capabilities based on accurate self evaluation, for which the awareness and concept need to be redefined to help them face up to the reality by readjusting career goal to a realistic level. Second, active career development plan to improve shortcoming in terms of outplacement competency is required. Third, it is necessary to establish the infrastructure related to outplacement training such as ON-OFF Line training system and facilities for learning to reinforce user-oriented outplacement training as a regular training course before during after the retirement.

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Education of Humanistic Tendency of Kerschensteiner (케어션스타이너 교육사상의 인문적 전통)

  • Kim, Deok-Chill
    • Journal of Fisheries and Marine Sciences Education
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    • v.13 no.1
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    • pp.117-131
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    • 2001
  • The character of the educational tradition of Germany could be divided into two aspects. One is the humanistic liberal tendency and the other is vocational. From the beginning of the Twentieth Century, however, there has been an attempt to unify these two trends by the . Georg Kerschensteiner is the first of importance to make some comprehensive curriculum for this goal. In Kerschensteiner, the genuine education makes the individual assume his work and role in society, and to develop them by cultivating insight, will and power. His view is well expressed in the slogn "The vocational education is the beginning of the humanistic education." His goal is to make men of independence and autonomy through vocational education. The theory of Kerschensteiner's education is called 'general vocational education'. The reason why is that his vocational education concerns not just technical training for industry, but also general liberal arts. In this point, Kerschensteiner's point of view goes back to Wilhelm von Humboldt, neo-humanist afar in the first half of the Ninteenth Century, and to John Dewey, pragmatist in the contemporary age of Kerschensteiner. Kerschensteiner was much influenced by Humboldt's concepts of power and individuality. These concepts came to be embodied as a principle of vocational education in Kerschensteiner. Furthermore, Humboldt's concept of power could be associated with Dewey's theory of reflexive thinking. The power in Humboldt is to create spirit, which is connected with the world outside through language. The reflexive thinking of Dewey is a process that examines and selects some alternative thinking in the consciousness before acting. This process makes one find the method of problem-solving which results in behaviour. That is the experimental spirit or pragmatic behaviourism. These theories are reduced to the concept of 'work' in Kerschensteiner. And Kerschensteiner's theory of education that has both sides, humanistic and vocational, is similar to that of John Dewey. Dewey brings forward the idea that the vocational education is the best way to cultivate intelligence and emotion, as intelligence operates best in the life. The position of Dewey is in accord with that of Kerschensteiner who intends to cover experiences of various fields of society through practice-learning, and to have knowledge got from outside of school, refuting the misled trend of education isolated from real life. However, there is some difference between Kerschensteiner and Humbolt or Dewey. While the Neo-humanism of Humbolt and the pragmatic education of Dewey put emphasis rather on the liberal arts and culture of individuality, Kerschensteiner is concerned more with the work and life of the reality of society as a group. Kerschensteiner's concept of utility is related to education for the whole man and to the work of the individual and the nation as well as the will and power to practice it. The ideal man of utility of Kerschensteiner is to learn perfectly the value and behaviour of society through vocational life and to have right view of the state establishing a sound mutual relation between individual and state. Kerschensteiner is regarded as a devotee of 'the state of harmony' or 'the ideal of the state', as he makes the state as the criterion for defining the role of the individual. It can be said that Kerschensteiner is not a democrat of the American style as Dewey is, as he makes much of the value of the nation and state. However, he is a humanist and democrat in the point of vocational education. His purpose of education is to make whole men through work and vocational education.

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Domestic and International Experts' Perception of Policy and Direction on STEAM Education (융합인재교육(STEAM)의 정책과 실행 방향에 대한 국내외 전문가들의 인식)

  • Jung, Jaehwa;Jeon, Jaedon;Lee, Hyonyong
    • Journal of Science Education
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    • v.39 no.3
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    • pp.358-375
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    • 2015
  • The purposes of this study were to investigate the value, necessity and legitimacy of STEAM Education and to propose practical approaching methods for STEAM Education to be applicable in Korea through a variety of literature review, case studies and collecting suggestions from domestic and international educational experts. The research questions are as follows: (1) To investigate the perception, understanding and recognitions of domestic and foreign professionals in STEAM education. (2) To analyze policy implications for an improvement in STEAM. The following aspects of STEAM were found to be challenges in our current STEAM policy after analyzing multiple questionnaires with the professionals and case studies including their experiences, understanding, supports and directions of the policy from the governments. The results indicate that (1) there was a lack of precise and conceptual understanding of STEAM in respect to experience. Training sessions for teachers in this field to help transform their perception is necessary. Development of practical programs with an easy access is also required. It is important to get the aims of related educational activities recognized by the professionals and established standards for an evaluation. The experts perceived that a theme-based learning is the most preferred and effective approaching method and the programs that develop creative thinking and learning applicable to practice are required to promote. (2) The results indicate that there was a lack of programs and inducements for supporting outstanding STEAM educators. It is shown that making an appropriate environment for STEAM education takes the first priority before training numbers of teachers unilaterally, thus securing enough budget seems critical. The professionals also emphasize on developing specialized teaching materials that include diverse inter-related subjects such as science technology, engineering, arts and humanities and social science with diverse viewpoints and advanced technology. This work requires a STEAM network for teachers to link up and share their materials, documents and experiences. It is necessary to get corporations, universities, and research centers participated in the network. (3) With respect to direction, it is necessary to propose policy that makes STEAM education ordinary and more practical in the present education system. The professionals have recommended training sessions that help develop creative thinking and amalgamative problem-solving techniques. They require reducing the workload of teachers and changing teachers' perspectives towards STEAM. They further urge a tight cooperation between departments of the government related with STEAM.

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Aviation Safety Regulation and ICAO's Response to Emerging Issues (항공안전규제와 새로운 이슈에 대한 ICAO의 대응)

  • Shin, Dong-Chun
    • The Korean Journal of Air & Space Law and Policy
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    • v.30 no.1
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    • pp.207-244
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    • 2015
  • Aviation safety is the stage in which the risk of harm to persons or of property damage is reduced to, and maintained at or below, an acceptable level through a continuing process of hazard identification and risk management. Many accidents and incidents have been taking place since 2014, while there had been relatively safer skies before 2014. International civil aviation community has been exerting great efforts to deal with these emerging issues, thus enhancing and ensuring safety throughout the world over the years. The Preamble of the Chicago Convention emphasizes safety and order of international air transport, and so many Articles in the Convention are related to the safety. Furthermore, most of the Annexes to the Convention are International Standards and Recommended Practices pertaining to the safety. In particular, Annex 19, which was promulgated in Nov. 2013, dealing with safety management system. ICAO, as law-making body, has Air Navigation Commission, Council, Assembly to deliberate and make decisions regarding safety issues. It is also implementing USOAP and USAP to supervise safety functions of member States. After MH 370 disappeared in 2014, ICAO is developing Global Tracking System whereby there should be no loophole in tracking the location of aircraft anywhere in world with the information provided by many stakeholders concerned. MH 17 accident drove ICAO to install web-based repository where information relating to the operation in conflict zones is provided and shared. In addition, ICAO has been initiating various solutions to emerging issues such as ebola outbreak and operation under extreme meteorological conditions. Considering the necessity of protection and sharing of safety data and information to enhance safety level, ICAO is now suggesting enhanced provisions to do so, and getting feedback from member States. It has been observed that ICAO has been approaching issues towards problem-solving from four different dimensions. First regarding time, it analyses past experiences and best practices, and make solutions in short, mid and long terms. Second, from space perspective, ICAO covers States, region and the world as a whole. Third, regarding stakeholders it consults with and hear from as many entities as it could, including airlines, airports, community, consumers, manufacturers, air traffic control centers, air navigation service providers, industry and insurers. Last not but least, in terms of regulatory changes, it identifies best practices, guidance materials and provisions which could become standards and recommended practices.

A Study on Qulity Perceptions and Satisfaction for Medical Service Marketing (의료서비스 마케팅을 위한 품질지각과 만족에 관한 연구)

  • Yoo, Dong-Keun
    • Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing Administration
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    • v.2 no.1
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    • pp.97-114
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    • 1996
  • INSTRODUCTION Service quality is, unlike goods quality, an abstract and elusive constuct. Service quality and its requirements are not easily understood by consumers, and also present some critical research problems. However, quality is very important to marketers and consumers in that it has many strategic benefits in contributing to profitability of marketing activities and consumers' problem-solving activities. Moreover, despite the phenomenal growth of medical service sector, few researchers have attempted to define and model medical service quality. Especially, little research has focused on the evaluation of medical service quality and patient satisfaction from the perspectives of both the provider and the patient. As competition intensifies and patients are demanding higher quality of medical service, medical service quality and patient satisfaction has emerged as a critical research topic. The major purpose of this article is to explore the concept of medical service quality and its evaluation from both nurse and patient perspectives. This article attempts to achieve its purpose by (1)classfying critical service attibutes into threecategories(satisfiers, hygiene factors, and performance factors). (2)measuring the relative importance of need criteria, (3)evaluating SERVPERF model and SERVQUAL model in medical service sector, and (4)identifying the relationship between perceived quality and overall patient satisfaction. METHOD Data were gathered from a sample of 217 patients and 179 nurses in Seoul-area general hospitals. From the review of previous literature, 50 survey items representing various facets of the medical service quality were developed to form a questionnaire. A five-point scale ranging from "Strongly Agree"(5) to "Strongly Disagree"(1) accompanied each statement(expectation statements, perception statements, and importance statements). To measure overall satisfaction, a seven-point scale was used, ranging from "Very Satisfied"(7) to "Very Dissatisfied"(1) with no verbal labels for scale points 2 through 6 RESULTS In explaining the relationship between perceived performance and overall satisfaction, only 31 variables out of original 50 survey items were proven to be statistically significant. Hence, a penalty-reward analysis was performed on theses 31 critical attributes to find out 17 satisfiers, 8 hygiene factors, and 4 performance factors in patient perspective. The role(category) of each service quality attribute in relation to patient satisfaction was com pared across two groups, that is, patients and nurses. They were little overlapped, suggesting that two groups had different sets of 'perceived quality' attributes. Principal components factor analyses of the patients' and nurses' responses were performed to identify the underlying dimensions for the set of performance(experience) statements. 28 variables were analyzed by using a varimax rotation after deleting three obscure variables. The number of factors to be extracted was determined by evaluating the eigenvalue scores. Six factors wereextracted, accounting for 57.1% of the total variance. Reliability analysis was performed to refine the factors further. Using coefficient alpha, scores of .84 to .65 were obtained. Individual-item analysis indicated that all statements in each of the factors should remain. On 26 attributes of 31 critical service quality attributes, there were gaps between actual patient's importance of need criteria and nurse perceptions of them. Those critical attributes could be classified into four categories based on the relative importance of need criteria and perceived performance from the perspective of patient. This analysis is useful in developing strategic plans for performance improvement. (1) top priorities(high importance and low performance) (in this study)- more health-related information -accuracy in billing - quality of food - appointments at my convenience - information about tests and treatments - prompt service of business office -adequacy of accommodations(elevators, etc) (2) current strengths(high importance and high performance) (3)unnecessary strengths(low importance and high performance) (4) low priorities(low importance and low performance) While 26 service quality attributes of SERPERF model were significantly related to patient satisfation, only 13 attributes of SERVQUAL model were significantly related. This result suggested that only experience-based norms(SERVPERF model) were more appropriate than expectations to serve as a benchmark against which service experiences were compared(SERVQUAL model). However, it must be noted that the degree of association to overall satisfaction was not consistent. There were some gaps between nurse percetions and patient perception of medical service performance. From the patient's viewpoint, "personal likability", "technical skill/trust", and "cares about me" were most significant positioning factors that contributed patient satisfaction. DISCUSSION This study shows that there are inconsistencies between nurse perceptions and patient perceptions of medical service attributes. Also, for service quality improvement, it is most important for nurses to understand what satisfiers, hygiene factors, and performance factors are through two-way communications. Patient satisfaction should be measured, and problems identified should be resolved for survival in intense competitive market conditions. Hence, patient satisfaction monitoring is now becoming a standard marketing tool for healthcare providers and its role is expected to increase.

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