About the Higher Education TechQual+ Project

The Higher Education TechQual+ Project has its origins in a pilot assessment conducted at Texas A&M University at Qatar in the Spring of 2006. Under the leadership of Dr. Timothy M. Chester, the management team of Information Technology Services (ITS) worked to build a survey to gather feedback from the TAMUQ community of end users in a way that would provide objective criteria for service and project planning.

They modeled their work on the existing SERVQUAL and IS SERVQUAL approaches. Particular attention was paid to pioneering work by the leadership of Texas A&M University Libraries and their partners from the Association of Research Libraries who had developed the LibQual+ assessment tools. The LibQual+ conceptual model itself was also based on SERVQUAL.

Following the success of the pilot project, a research project was commissioned by Dr. Timothy Chester. The goal of the project is to develop a generalizable survey instrument that can be adopted by IT organizations in higher education. The TechQual+ survey is delivered through this Web site, shielding participating institutions from the complexities of designing a survey, communicating with respondents, and analyzing survey results.

The TechQual+ core survey has been developed through multiple rounds of qualitative and quantitative data collection from participating institutions. Using this data, the TechQual+ instrument is continually refined. The goal of the project is to understand what end users expect from IT organizations and then systematically explore the quality of IT services in a way that provides for comparisons across institutions.

Additional information regarding the project, including the formal research design, institutional review board (IRB) documents, transcripts of project meetings, and power-point slides are available inside the password protected area of this Web site. To access these materials you must register, following the 'Signup' link at the top of this page. Presentations regarding the TechQual+ survey and tools are available here.

The TechQual+ project team is grateful for the exceptional work by the staff of the Texas A&M University Libraries as they developed and implemented the LibQual+ process. The success of the TechQual+ project will be due in large part inspiration derived from the the pioneering research that resulted in LibQual+.

Learn More About the TechQual+ Approach