Lieutenant Wendi Babst
Portland State University
2010 EMPA Cohort

 How to identify the service expectations from the partner agencies who interact with Child Abuse Team members on a daily basis.
 How to measure the level at which the Child Abuse Team is currently meeting the service expectations of partner agencies.

CLACKAMAS COUNTY CHILD ABUSE
TEAM
 Follow up investigation on cases involving crimes against children including but not limited to:
 Sexual abuse
 Physical abuse
 Neglect
 Computer-related crimes (Clackamas County
Sheriff’s Office, 2002)

CLACKAMAS COUNTY CHILD ABUSE
TEAM
 Provide training and consultation with patrol deputies and other personnel
 Participate in annual
Clackamas County Child
Abuse and Family Violence
Summit

CLACKAMAS COUNTY CHILD ABUSE
TEAM

 Review of over 1,600 referrals from the Oregon
Department of Human Services (Kollias, 2012)
 Investigation of 181 criminal cases (Kollias, 2012)
 Child Abuse Summit
 Over 600 attendees
 National and international participation

 Partner agency personnel who regularly interact with and rely on work product from Child Abuse Team members:
 Clackamas County Deputy District Attorney
 Oregon State/Clackamas County Medical Examiner’s
Office
 Oregon Department of Human Services Child Welfare
Division - split into 2 groups by location
 The Children’s Center (medical assessment center)

 Lack of any formal study of service quality for the detective division or the Child Abuse Team – annual reports detail outputs only (Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office, 2010)
 2002 performance audit of entire Sheriff’s Office only examined numerical outputs and case load (Maximus, 2002)
 2012 telephone survey of 400 Clackamas County residents:
 31% were very satisfied with Clackamas County’s performance in providing public safety services
 38% were somewhat satisfied (DHM Research, 2012)

 Service quality is a central and growing concern for U.S. businesses and government agencies (Zeithaml,
Parasuraman, & Berry, 1990)
 Evidence-based practices in policing allow for systemic feedback which can be applied to continuous quality improvement planning (Sherman, 1998)
 Public agency funding opportunities often tied to evidencebased practice assessment of programs (US Department of
Justice, 1999, Mears & Bacon, 2009)





Service quality – based on the expectations of the customer differs from satisfaction which is based on the expectations of the provider (Parasuraman et. al, 1988; Wisniewski & Donnelly,
1996; Bland, 1997)
Service gap analysis has been used by private sector service providers for many years – valid and reliable (Parasuraman, et. al,
1988)
Gap analysis used to measure public sector entities in UK (Bland,
1997; Donnelly, Kerr, Rimmer & Shiu, 2006)
Gap analysis offers a method to identify customer priorities and service failures in order to prioritize perceived problems and take remedial action to close service gaps (Bland, 1997)

 Developed by Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry in 1980s and refined over the 1990s (Parasuraman et. al, 1988;
Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V., & Berry, L., 1991)
 Studied focus groups to identify key dimensions of service quality – identified ten evaluative dimensions and consolidated into five dimensions of service quality
(Zeithaml et. al, 1990)
 Developed customer surveys and conducted studies involving a broad range of service providers (Zeithaml et. al,
1990)

SERVQUAL CUSTOMER PERCEPTION TOOL
 Examines service quality through the use of a Likert scale questionnaire that measures the following dimension of service quality:





Tangibles – physical facilities, equipment, personnel appearance, communication material
Reliability – the ability toe perform the service dependably and accurately
Responsiveness – the willingness to provide the appropriate service and respond to requests for assistance
Assurance – the knowledge of employees, courtesy of employees, and the ability of employee to inspire trust and confidence
Empathy – the caring, individualized attention provided to the customer (Parasuraman et. al, 1988, Zeithaml et. al, 1990,
Parasuraman et. al, 1991)

SERVQUAL CUSTOMER PERCEPTION TOOL
 Likert scale numerical score for 22 statements used to assess customer expectations and 22 statements used to assess perceptions for reliability:
 Expectation - An excellent Child Abuse Team will provide
their services at the time they promise to.
 Perception -The Clackamas County Sheriff ’s Office Child
Abuse Team provides its services at the time it promises to.
 Numerical gap score (Q) derived by subtracting the expectation score from the perception score
P – E = Q (Zeithaml et. al, 1990)

SERVQUAL CUSTOMER PERCEPTION TOOL
 Survey respondents were also asked to assign a numerical score (number of points out of a total of 100) to 5 general statements, each representing one of the five dimensions of service quality
 Numerical score identified the relative importance of each of the dimensions which was used to generate weighted service gap scores (Parasuraman, et. al, 1988; Zeithaml et. al,
1990; Parasuraman et al, 1991)

 Online survey method using the SurveyMonkey™ webbased questionnaire and survey software program
 Survey distributed to approximately 70 respondents by email
 62 started the survey
 59 completed the survey
 56 final surveys were reviewed based on additional criteria

Strongly Agree 7
6
5
Neither Agree or Disagree 4
3
2
Strongly Disagree 1
Acceptable 5.6
Tangibles
Reliability
Responsiveness
Assurance
Empathy

Strongly Agree 7,00
6,00
5,00
Neither Agree or Disagree 4,00
3,00
2,00
Strongly Disagree 1,00
Acceptable 5.6
Tangibles
Reliability
Responsiveness
Assurance
Empathy

Tangibles
Reliability
Responsiveness
Assurance
Empathy

District
Attorney
Medical
Examiner
DHS-Oregon
City
DHS-North Clackamas
Tangibles
Reliability
Responsiveness
Assurance
Empathy
Children's
Center

0,00
Tangibles
-0,48
Reliability Responsiveness Assurance
-0,76
-0,48 -0,48
Empathy
-0,76
-3,83
-5,00
-8,33
-10,00 -9,25
-9,93
-15,00
Unweighted Score
Weighted Score
-20,00
-25,00
-30,00
-35,00
-31,34

DHS-OC DHS-NC
Children's
Center
0,00
DA ME
-2,00
-4,00
-6,00
-8,00
-10,00
-12,00
Unweighted Score
Weighted Score

DHS-OC DHS-NC
Children's
Center
20
DA ME
0
-20
-40
-60
-80
-100
-120
-140
-160
Unweighted
Weighted

-80
-100
-40
-60
0
-20
DA ME DHS-OC DHS-NC
Children's
Center
20
Unweighted
Weighted

Children's
Center
10,00
DA ME DHS-OC DHS-NC
0,00
-10,00
-20,00
-30,00
-40,00
-50,00
-60,00
Unweighted
Weighted

-10,00
-15,00
-20,00
-25,00
-30,00
-35,00
-40,00
-45,00
Children's
Center
5,00
DA ME DHS-OC DHS-NC
0,00
-5,00
Unweighted
Weighted

 Overall satisfaction level is below average for all dimensions
 Largest weighted service gap in the reliability dimension
 Reliability is the most important feature for all partners
 Importance of five features fairly consistent between disciplines
 Large disparity in scores between partner agencies

 More qualitative data is needed to further identify the areas where service quality is lacking focusing on the areas of most importance to partner agencies – reliability, responsiveness and assurance
 Leader needs to engage in coalition building with partner agencies and include them in setting policy for change
 Results of the survey help to “establish a sense of urgency” to begin the process of change (Kotter, 1996)

Bland, N. (1997). Measuring public expectations of policing: an evaluation of
gap analysis. London, UK: Great Britain Home Office, Policing and
Reducing Crime Unit.
Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office. (2002). Clackamas County Sheriff ’s
Office manual of rules and regulations. Oregon City, OR: Clackamas
County Printing.
Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office. (2010). Clackamas County Sheriff ’s
Office Annual Crime Report 2010. Clackamas, OR: Clackamas
County Sheriff’s Office.

DHM Research. (2012). Clackamas County community survey report.
Portland, OR: DHM Research.
Donnelly, M., Kerr, N., Rimmer, R., & Shiu, E. (2006). Assessing the quality of police services using SERVQUAL. Policing, 29(1), 92-105.
Kollias, A. (2012). Child Abuse Team: Work Summary 2010-2011. Unpublished manuscript.
Kotter, J. P. (1996). Leading change. Boston: Harvard Business Review Press.

Maximus. (2002, December 13). Performance audit of the sheriff ’s office:
Clackamas County Oregon. Oakland, CA: Maximus, Inc.
Mears, D. P., & Bacon, S. (2009). Improving criminal justice through better decision making: Lessons learned from the medical system. Journal
of Criminal Justice, 37(2), 142-154.
Parasuraman, A., Berry, L., & Zeithaml, V. (1988). SERVQUAL: A multipleitem scale for measuring consumer perceptions of service quality.
Journal of Retailing, 64(1), 12-40.
Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V., & Berry, L. (1991). Refinement and reassessment of the SERVQUAL scale. Journal of Retailing, 67(4),
420-450.

Sherman, L. W. (1998). Evidence-based policing. Ideas in American Policing.
Washington, DC: Police Foundation.
U.S. Department of Justice. (1999). Measuring what matters: Proceedings from
the Policing Research Institute meetings. Washington, DC: Author.
Wisniewski, M., & Donnelly, M. (1996). Measuring service quality in the public sector: the potential for SERVQUAL. Total Quality
Management, 7(4), 357-366. doi:10.1080/09544129650034710
Zeithaml, V., Parasuraman, L., & Berry, L. (1990). Delivering quality service:
Balancing customer perceptions and expectations. New York, NY: The
Free Press.