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Does the Quality of Academic Life Matter for Students’ Performance, Loyalty and University Recommendation?

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Abstract

The quality of academic life (QAL) is concerned with all the general feelings of satisfaction of a student who experiences university. For universities, academic staff, public managers and policy makers, the fundamental question is how the measures and management of this construct can be improved in order to render a better service to students. Based on a sample of 726 students from all Portuguese State universities, we test a structural model that allows us to evaluate the impact of QAL on students’ academic performance (SAP) along with loyalty and willingness to recommend the university. In the analysis of all groups, the results reveal that QAL has a positive and significant, although not robust, influence on SAP. That positive influence is ratified, however, in the multi-group analysis for the 2nd and 3rd Study Cycles, through obtaining significant and robust empirical evidence. The results also show that QAL is a good predictor of loyalty and university recommendation.

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Acknowledgment

We gratefully acknowledge the editor and the anonymous reviewers for providing very constructive and useful comments that enabled us to make additional efforts to improve the clarity and quality of our research and correct some inaccuracies present in the previous version of our manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Management and Economics, School of Social and Human Sciences, University of Beira Interior, Covilhã, Portugal

    Eugénia Pedro, João Leitão & Helena Alves

  2. CEG-IST, Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

    João Leitão

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  1. Eugénia Pedro
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  2. João Leitão
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  3. Helena Alves
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Correspondence to Eugénia Pedro.

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Pedro, E., Leitão, J. & Alves, H. Does the Quality of Academic Life Matter for Students’ Performance, Loyalty and University Recommendation?. Applied Research Quality Life 11, 293–316 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-014-9367-6

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