Assessing Service Quality in Training and Career-Guidance Events from the Perspective of Participants’ Experiences: A SERVQUAL and Importance–Performance Comparison of Conference and Workshop Formats

Career-guidance and training events support young people’s transition to the labour market, yet little is known about how their two main formats—conferences and workshops—meet participants’ expectations. This study evaluated the conference and workshop components of a Romanian career-guidance event series (EFOP-T) using the SERVQUAL (service quality) expectation–perception gap model and Importance–Performance Analysis (IPA), complemented by equivalence testing and bootstrap estimates of IPA stability. Data from 86 participants were analysed (72 evaluated the conference, 70 the workshop and 61 both). Both formats were rated favourably, but perceptions fell modestly and significantly short of expectations (gap = −0.27 for the conference and −0.23 for the workshop on a 5-point scale), and, contrary to the expected workshop advantage, the two formats were statistically equivalent in their overall gap. They differed in where they fell short: conferences on the relevance, clarity and labour-market usefulness of their content, workshops on practical activities, practical applicability and concrete examples. Participants who had attended several events reported a larger workshop gap than first-time participants. The findings suggest that event format alone does not determine perceived service quality and that improvement resources can be targeted at the attributes on which each format falls short of participants’ expectations.