Jurnal Empowerment Volume 8 Nomor 1, Februari 2019 e-ISSN : 2580-7692 p-ISSN : 2252-4738 1 COMPARATIVE STUDY OF PARENTS’ SATISFACTION RATE TOWARD BAITURRAHMAH DAYCARE SERVICE R. Siti Aisah1, Lince Sari Dianawati Leatemia2 1 IKIP Siliwangi, 2 PKBM Cahaya Kahuripan Bangsa, Lembang 1 rsitiaisah1976@gmail.com, 2 lince_sari_diana@pkbmckb.org ABSTRACT This research aims to investigate satisfaction change rate of parents before and after they drop their children at Baiturrahmah Daycare. Implementing the quantitative approach, data is gathered through questionnaire and literary studies. Research hypotheses are tested through the Wilcoxon method by comparing two paired samples. With 5% test rate, the results show that there are no significant parents satisfaction rate increase before and after they drop their children. Furthermore, according to the samples’ opinions, their expectations of the service quality before they drop their children met what service they are provided by the daycare—this discouraged the satisfaction rate increase. Keywords: Satisfaction rate, Daycare, Baiturrahmah, Parents, Early Childhood Education INTRODUCTION Complex age advances resulted in increasing demands toward a human’s life to fulfill what is needed to survive. They must meet numerous age demands to keep up with the present trends. To this end, humans need services provided by other humans. Families with close relatives tend to drop their children there while they are busy working (Gair, et al., 2019). The story changes as the subject shifts to families with no close relatives. They seek babysitters or daycare services to drop their children, while at the same time expecting early childhood education to be provided to their children (Li, et al., 2017). Indonesia’s workplace and working life culture is undergoing profound change. Technology enables more flexibility—at the cost of extending the working day beyond the daily 8 hours confines. Working women, in particular, have impacts regarding this flexibility. This has laid the foundations for fresh career paths where work and home life can be more intertwined. A radical change Indonesia needs the most is for the gender pay gap to narrow. According to The International Labor Organization (ILO), the gender pay gap in Indonesia was still approx. 19%. An immediate consequence is that women must work more to match men’s salary or even vice versa. This is an issue on itself since on average, women live longer than men and Indonesia, in particular, confines women to a dutiful domestic work. Yet, this phenomenon has slowly turned to favor the trend of working mother phenomena. While also having to handle domestic work, mothers now have to double their efforts into the workforce, some even sacrificing their time with their family. This caused a number of problems, particularly parenting patterns. Brinet, Freud, and Watson (in Nuryanti, 2008, pp. Jurnal Empowerment Volume 8 Nomor 1, Februari 2019 e-ISSN : 2580-7692 p-ISSN : 2252-4738 2 4) argued that parenting patterns became determining factor for child growth and development. Working mothers are now helped. From feeding their children, changing their dresses, to even educative guidances now they mostly rely upon a babysitter or daycare. As the temporal replacement figure of a mother to the child, they are partly responsible for monitoring the development of the child—positive, negative, or even hazardous toward their child’s growth progress. This requires considerations since parents will need to trust third parties to ensure their own kin grow and develop to what the society expects them to be. Children need care education, guidance, and care. In addition, their health is not a less important issue. Foods and nutrition remain a staple must for their growth to remain steady and balanced. Parents tend to qualify the babysitter or daycare service prior to deciding whom to trust (Breitkreuz & Colen, 2018; Kovács, 2018; Kemp, 2016). For a wide number of reasons, some working mothers tend to keep quiet about hiring a full- time babysitter or a full-time nanny. Some of them are afraid about seeming elitist, being judged for not being there to care for their own kin 24/7, concerned others will think they are overly privileged. This is infamously referred to as ‘the nanny stigma’. With the increasing number of dual-income households—where the mother and father both works and gain income—in the present age, nannies are a valued member of the family household. Yet, choosing the perfect nanny for the family has enacted some problems: (1) It becomes increasingly difficult to find a trustworthy, staple household assistant whom she can trust as a babysitter; (2) It is difficult to find a professional babysitter whom she can trust her child to— especially when dealing with toddlers younger than 5; (3) Where household assistants or professional babysitters are available, their wage is considerably expensive—to the standard of an average-income family in Bandung. As an alternative, social services that focuses on daycare services emerge as a solution to the gap presented by high wages versus low income struggling against demands. They provide material and immaterial help to the community; the community develops and manages such services, to an extent they serve a social function. Daycares in Indonesia are part of Indonesia’s Nonformal Education Services. Non-formal education establishes in neighbourhood communities and institutions (Leatemia & Hudaya, 2018). It serves the needs of the community to provide what they need, particularly knowledge, skills, activities, and attitudes required to serve their daily life in the present age. Daycares are not merely about dropping children. They provide facilities and programs arranged in a particular way enabling children to explore while feeling secure. In Indonesia, however, quality and decent daycares are scarce (Hikmah, 2014) to an extent where it’s available, the fees parents would have to pay is considered expensive. This disabled daycare from reaching many areas of our plural society. Comparing to the phenomena outside Indonesia, it is common for other countries to have parents drop their children to daycares since age four months old—more when they are both working. Indonesian daycares tend to cater children aged 1 and up. This is not always because of the parents working; ironically, some parents follow the trend so much they forget to cater their own children’s needs (Hikmah, 2014). Jurnal Empowerment Volume 8 Nomor 1, Februari 2019 e-ISSN : 2580-7692 p-ISSN : 2252-4738 3 For so many parents who work outside home, they have difficulties in parenthood, specifically childbearing. A major number of working mothers work with split concerns, as they have to leave their child while at the same time, they also have to work to fulfill household needs. To that extent, they agree to drop their children at daycare services. In Indonesia, daycare services are governed by the Social Department. Among all the daycare services in Bandung, this research focuses on Daycare Baiturrahmah. Its address is at Jl. Alwi Gombong No. 11 RW 07 Kelurahan Cicadas, Kecamatan Cibeunying Kidul, Kota Bandung. The daycare is well-known, for many parents drop their children here, ranging from 6 months old to 7 years old. However, the fee is considerable—to an extent that the daycare is obliged to provide high quality services for parents contribute to their operational fees (Stodnick & Rogers, 2008). The daycare regularly holds in-house trainings to improve staffs’ skills and capabilities, and periodic evaluation. This research aims to compare the satisfaction rates of parents who drop their children at the daycare before their first time and after they drop their children. Satisfaction, according to Kotler & Keller (2009), is a form of feeling that appears after comparing expectation with reality—that is, when expectations met the performance of a product or service. Muninjaya (2011) argued that there are five aspects that can be assessed in order to evaluate a daycare’s performance, especially regarding to their staffs: responsiveness, reliability, assurance, empathy, and tangibility. By comparing their expectations (that is, before the parents drop their children) and the performance they received (after they drop the children for a while), their satisfaction rate increase might indicate a meaningful number. This number may explain whether the daycare service is performing as expected, as a basis to analyse what aspects the daycare might need to attend in order to improve their service quality. METHOD This research uses the quantitative approach, implementing the survey method. 15 samples are taken from all parents that drops their children at Baiturrahmah daycare, picked randomly through random sampling (i.e. all parents have the same chance of being picked as a sample). There are two variables operated: daycare service (as the X variable) and satisfaction rate (as the Y variable). In measuring the two variables, a printed questionnaire of 20 question items are distributed to the samples in two different times: before they drop their children for the first time (as a mean to measure their expectation) and after they drop their children for several weeks (as a mean to measure the service they have received). The questionnaire item answers are developed in the likert scale (1 = Very Disappointed, 2 = Disappointed, 3 = Satisfied, 4 = Very Satisfied). We defined a pair of working hypotheses to be evaluated: H0 = There is no significant parents’ satisfaction rate increase toward Baiturrahmah daycare service, and H1 = There is a significant parents’ satisfaction rate increase toward Baiturrahmah daycare service. These hypotheses are tested with Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test (Wilcoxon, 1970) aided by SPSS 25. Jurnal Empowerment Volume 8 Nomor 1, Februari 2019 e-ISSN : 2580-7692 p-ISSN : 2252-4738 4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Results Table 1.1 Parents’ satisfaction rate in dropping their children to Baiturrahmah Daycare Service Before After 63 69 69 70 75 70 64 70 66 73 64 65 69 72 65 75 71 66 71 70 65 72 68 71 73 69 72 73 65 65 a. The data is gathered by performing a sum of all scores gathered from the questionnaire b. Each row indicates a single sample. Data is taken two times (before and after). c. There are a number of 20 items in total, each item’s score range is 1-4, with 1 = very disappointed, 2 = disappointed, 3 = satisfied, and 4 = very satisfied. Therefore, the minimum sum of scores is 20, while the maximum of all scores is 80. Table 1.1 illustrates the parents’ satisfaction rate before and after they drop their children in Baiturrahmah daycare service, gathered from the questionnaire. As a general view, the lowest sum of scores is 63 (before) and 65 (after), while the highest sum of scores is 75 on both before and after. The scores represent a general view of all five satisfaction indicators: responsiveness, reliability, assurance, empathy, and tangibility. Jurnal Empowerment Volume 8 Nomor 1, Februari 2019 e-ISSN : 2580-7692 p-ISSN : 2252-4738 5 Table 1.2. Raw tabulated questionnaire answers a Rows N1-N15 represent data gathered from the samples before they first drop their children to the daycare. b Rows N16-N30 represent data gathered from the samples after they drop their children to the daycare in a specified time range. Table 1.2 illustrates the raw data gathered by tabulating the questionnaire. Rows N1-N15 represent data gathered to the samples before they drop their children to the daycare, while rows N16-N30 represent data gathered to the samples after they drop their children to the daycare. Questions 1-4 relates to the responsiveness aspect of the five satisfaction indicators. Questions 5-8 relates to the reliability aspect of the five satisfaction indicators. Questions 9- 12 relates to the assurance aspect of the five satisfaction indicators. Questions 13-16 relates to the empathy aspect of the five satisfaction indicators. Questions 17-20 relates to the tangibility aspect of the five satisfactions indicator. The total score represents the general view of satisfaction expressed by the samples, ranging from total score 20 (very dissatisfied, answering ‘1’ to all questions) to total score 80 (very satisfied, answering ‘4’ to all questions). Jurnal Empowerment Volume 8 Nomor 1, Februari 2019 e-ISSN : 2580-7692 p-ISSN : 2252-4738 6 Discussion As previously briefed in the Introduction section, Kotler & Keller (2009) argued that satisfaction is an expression of feeling which emerges afer expectations and reality met—i.e. when expectations of a particular product or service’s performance met the actual performance. In this discussion, we imply that parents are ‘satisfied’ when what they expect of Baiturrahmah Daycare’s performance met the actual work and service performance they encountered. To make discussions objective, we draw from Muninjaya’s (2011) argument about the five aspects to assess in order to evaluate a daycare’s performance, particularly about the staffs. The five aspects are responsiveness (how responsive staffs are in handling parents’ requests), reliability (how reliable staffs are in their service), assurance (how strong staffs are in assuring parents that they will perform to their expectations), empathy (how empathic staffs are in answering parents’ problems and providing service to their children), and tangibility (how solid the staffs are in working as a team). Full-day cares, or simply daycares, work in a daily basis usually 8 hours a day, even more. Child needs are temporarily fulfilled by the daycare—as a consequence, they are also partly responsible to ensure their needs are met—in addition to catering children interests and tending to their development process. Each children development factor—namely those who come from within their social circle and those who come from outside—will work together. They will tie each other and affect each other in an interrelated process which will ultimately affect the children’s development process. We can envision fine development when a combination of given facilities and a child’s natural potential pushes them to their best. Deviant social environment may lead to a child’s disability in their psycho-physical aspects of life. The explanation above laid a solid foundation to why daycares need to provide their best service and excellence in serving the childrens they have been entrusted upon. Before furthering the discussion, we’d like to briefly mention Table 1.2. The columns are arranged systematically to represent the five aspects of daycare staff performances argued by Muninjaya (2011). Columns 1-4 represent answers to questions that deals with staffs’ responsiveness. Columns 5-8 represent answers to questions that deals with staffs’ reliability. Columns 9-12 represent answers to questions that deals with staffs’ assurance. Columns 13- 16 represent answers to questions that deals with staffs’ empathy. Finally, columns 17-20 represent answers to questions that deals with staffs’ tangibility. Table 1.2 shows several interesting trends. First, no single sample answered Very Dissatisfied (1) in all of the questions, in both before and after category. From this trend we may interpret this as a fact that all samples do not feel very dissatisfied with the service, before and after they drop their children. Second, there is a trend that score 4 (Very Satisfied) appears in many rows. This means that samples tend to be very satisfied at many aspects of the service, and generally they feel very satisfied by the service. Even so, there are some questions items they answer '2' (Dissatisfied), which means there are some aspects that the samples feel it needs improvements as well. Jurnal Empowerment Volume 8 Nomor 1, Februari 2019 e-ISSN : 2580-7692 p-ISSN : 2252-4738 7 We can also see from both Table 1.1 and Table 1.2 that as a general view, the lowest sum of scores is 63 (before) and 65 (after), while the highest sum of scores is 75 on both before and after. If we categorise the total scores into four score ranges: 20-39 being very dissatisfied, 40-59 being dissatisfied, 60-69 being satisfied, and 70-80 being very satisfied, we can see that in general, the samples feel at least satisfied both before and after they drop their children to the daycare. Table 1.3. Descriptive Statistics Before After N Valid 15 15 Missing 0 0 Mean 68.27 69.73 Std. Error of Mean .933 .842 Median 69.00 71.00 Mode 69a 65a Std. Deviation 3.615 3.262 Variance 13.067 10.638 Range 12 10 Minimum 63 65 Maximum 75 75 Sum 1024 1046 a. Multiple modes exist. The smallest value is shown To further this discussion, Table 1.3 illustrates descriptive statistics interpretation of the data presented in Table 1.1. Table 1.3. indicates that there is a difference in the mean of before (68.27) and after (69.73). In addition, the standard error of both means of before and after are 0.933 and 0.842, respectively. The medians are 69.00 and 71.00. The modes are 69 and 65— while multiple modes exist, we show the smallest value. The standard deviations of both data are 3.615 (before) and 3.262 (after). The variances of both data are 13.067 and 10.638, before and after respectively. The before category has a minimum score of 63 and maximum score of 75, spanning 12 numbers in range and a sum of 1024. The after category has a minimum score of 65 and a maximum score of 75, spanning 12 numbers in range and a sum of 1046. We draw from our brief mention of the views argued by Kemp (2016), Kovács (2018) and Breitkreuz & Colen (2018). Parents tend to quality the babysitter or daycare service prior to deciding whom to trust. From our discussion above we can see that parents already have high expectations of Baiturrahmah Daycare’s performance, signified by the values in the ‘before’ column ranging from 63 to 75. The numbers mean that parents expect a satisfying or very satisfying service before they drop their children. When they have expected such degree of quality, this implies that parents, before even considering to drop their children, have already done some research, to a degree, about Baiturrahmah Daycare. Based on Table 1.3., we can see that there is a different mean of parents’ satisfaction rate (before=68.27, after=69.73). While the increasing number of mean often indicates the Jurnal Empowerment Volume 8 Nomor 1, Februari 2019 e-ISSN : 2580-7692 p-ISSN : 2252-4738 8 increase of satisfaction rate, we must analyse this difference with a mean comparation test since the means are means of samples, not population means. By analyzing both data categories with 5% Wilcoxon test rate, the Asymp. Sig. (2-tailed) value being compared against the rate is 0,344. This is higher than the test rate (5% = 0,05). Table 1.4 illustrates the Wilcoxon test used to compare both hypotheses. Based on the numbers generated from the test, we may conclude that H0 is accepted. Therefore, there is no significant parents’ satisfaction rate increase before and after they drop their children to Baiturrahmah daycare. Table 1.4 Wilcoxon Test after - before Z -.947b Asymp. Sig. (2-tailed) .344 Monte Carlo Sig. (2-tailed) Sig. .368 95% Confidence Interval Lower Bound .359 Upper Bound .377 Monte Carlo Sig. (1-tailed) Sig. .187 95% Confidence Interval Lower Bound .179 Upper Bound .194 a. Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test b. Based on negative ranks. c. Based on 10000 sampled tables with starting seed 2000000. The researchers attempted to confirm the test findings by questioning the samples. According to their answers, most of them had already been expecting a good service quality from the daycare before they drop their children for the first time, and the service they have received met their expectations so there is no significant satisfaction rate increase. “We’ve been expecting something good and we get them,” said one sample who wish not to be named, “We can hope for nothing less.” Their statement further solidifies the views argued by Kemp (2016), Kovács (2018) and Breitkreuz & Colen (2018), as briefly mentioned in the Discussion and Introduction sections of this article. To further this information, we can interpret some of the samples’ answers to this unplanned interview. A sample noted, “Before we first drop our daughter, we have heard about Baiturrahmah. This time, rumours aren’t wrong.” By expressing their content about the fact that they are not feeling dissatisfied after they drop their daughter, we can see that their expectations have been met by the daycare. However, this fact also demands further investigation. What factors support the redeeming quality of the daycare that the parents felt satisfied by the service must be investigated. There Jurnal Empowerment Volume 8 Nomor 1, Februari 2019 e-ISSN : 2580-7692 p-ISSN : 2252-4738 9 might be a vast number of possibilities, and a research must be conducted to uncover each potential of the daycare. If we knew why the daycare performs exceptionally well, we can later implement the analysis results to other daycares. As a result of a chain reaction, the quality of daycare services in Indonesia would have increased. CONCLUSION The results show that there are no significant parents satisfaction rate increase before and after they drop their children. Furthermore, according to the samples’ opinions, their expectations of the service quality before they drop their children met what service they are provided by the daycare—this discouraged the satisfaction rate increase. Further researches must be conducted in order to explore the factors that discouraged such increase. REFERENCES Breitkreuz, R., & Colen, K. (2018). Who Cares? Motivations for Unregulated Child Care Use. Journal of Family Issues, 39(17), 4066-4088. Gair, S., Zuchowski, I., Thorpe, R., Henderson, D., & Munns, L. (2019). ‘In the Firing Line’: Grandparent Carers at Risk of Family Violence. Journal of Family Violence, 1-9. Hikmah, S. (2014). Optimalisasi Perkembangan Anak dalam Day Care. SAWWA, 9(2), 345- 360. Kemp, S. (2016). Contemporary issues in the professionalisation of child care in Australia. 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