How Should the Social Service Quality Evaluation in South Korea Be Verified? Focusing on Community Care Services

The quality evaluation (QE) of social services tends to have a large variation in results depending on the object and method of service measurement. To overcome these limitations, an analysis of the internal consistency or validity of the social service QE index is necessary, but meta-research on this is insufficient. This study analyzes the internal consistency and validity of evaluation indexes based on the results of social service QE. We utilized the social services QE manual of the Social Security Information Service’s Facility Evaluation Department. The social service QE indexes implemented in 2013 and 2016 were coded and analyzed. We found that there was internal consistency between the results of the care services evaluation in 2013 and 2016. In addition, there were differences between the care services QE indexes by service type in 2013 and 2016. It is necessary to construct effective indexes by simplifying, diversifying, and differentiating social service QE indexes. In addition, control devices for external factors (region, composition of the evaluation team, etc.) must be prepared to maintain the consistency of evaluation scores, and in the long term, standardization of social service QE indexes is necessary.