Applying importance-performance analysis to assess student employability in Taiwan

Purpose: In Taiwan, higher education institutions formulate and implement employment policies and strategies. The purpose of this paper is to examine university students’ employment performance in Taiwan. Importance-performance analysis (IPA) provides resource managers with easy-to-understand student preferences and employability performance. Design/methodology/approach: Using the IPA method, the author can establish guidelines for employability strategies for higher education institutions. The research was carried out in spring 2017 at 16 universities in Taiwan, and the findings were drawn from 723 respondents. Data were entered and analyzed by using the SPSS statistical software package version 22.0, and the raw data from each participant’s responses were coded numerically. Three types of quantitative data analysis were conducted: descriptive statistics, reliability analysis, and IPA. Findings: Through IPA, the author concluded that the factor considered most important for student performance in higher education institutions was “professional attitude.” The factors of career planning and professional knowledge were considered less important for performance. Originality/value: By confirmatory factor analysis, various goodness-of-fit indices were obtained from this data. The data are analyzed through IPA. It can help school managers to identify which attributes or factors should be improved to increase student satisfaction.