Investigating the Mental Image on Scientific Prestige of Universities and its Association with Service Improvement in Higher Education; Testing the Mediating Role of Relationship Quality

Recently, the concept of "scientific prestige" has attained an increasingly important status in winning the competitive advantages among universities and higher education institutions. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to investigate the direction and stability of relationships among service improvement, relationship quality and mental image on scientific prestige in higher education institutions. This descriptive study was of a causal-correlational type. The statistical population of this study was composed of all students residing in student dormitories of public universities in Semnan city and Sabzevar. A questionnaire was designed by the researcher(s) to measure the research variables and, then, it was distributed among 364 students who were selected by stratified random sampling method. Next, the Independent T-test, One-way ANOVA, Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Structural Equation Model were used to analyze the data. The results showed that service improvement played a key role (directly and indirectly) in developing scientific prestige image through relationship quality. Also, the relationship quality had a positive, direct and meaningful impact on university’s scientific prestige image. In addition, the results showed that there was no significant difference between the male and female students in terms of mental image on university’s scientific prestige.