Research
Beyond the information center: An instrument to measure end-user
computing support from multiple sources
Chittibabu Govindarajulu
a,*
, Brian J. Reithel
b
a
Department of Computer Information System, COBA, Southwest Missouri State University, Spring®eld, MO 65807, USA
b
Department of Management and Marketing, School of Business Administration, University of Mississippi, University, MS 38677, USA
Received 30 December 1996; revised 11 August 1997; accepted 21 December 1997
Abstract
Recent studies have shown that end-users may be dissatis®ed with support received from the centralized information center.
While this has been the predominant source of formal support in the past, contemporary studies have identi®ed a more
decentralized form of support: local MIS staff. A third popular support source for end-users is the informal network of friends
and colleagues. The relative degree of support that end-users receive from each of these sources is not evident. The lack of a
reliable instrument to measure end-user support may have contributed to this absence of evidence. This paper presents an
instrument that was designed to measure support from a set of diverse sources, such as the information center, local MIS staff,
and informal sources. The instrument was pre-tested and re®ned prior to collecting data from 108 middle-level managers. The
construct and convergent validities of the instrument appear to be strong. This instrument will be useful to researchers and
practitioners who would like to identify support functions best provided by a speci®c support source. # 1998 Elsevier Science
B.V. All rights reserved
Keywords: EUC support; EUC support instrument; Instrument validity; Local MIS staff; Centralized and decentralized EUC
support
1. Introduction
End-user computing (EUC) is the use and/or devel-
opment of information systems (IS) by the principal
users of the systems' output or their staff [34]. Man-
agement of EUC is still receiving much attention from
the community. Because EUC has both advantages and
disadvantages, its effective management is required to
minimize risks and to maximize gains. EUC support
has received considerable attention in recent years [3,
5, 8, 14, 15, 18, 19, 22, 23, 25, 32]. Many researchers
have consistently pointed out users'dissatisfaction with
the services provided by Information Centers (ICs)
[1, 29]. At the same time, users tend to seek help from
other support sources, such as Informal Support (mainly
from colleagues and Lead Users) and Localized MIS
staff. However, the relative degree of support provided
by these sources on various areas of support (such as
hardware support, functional support) has not been
fully studied. This may be due to the absence of a com-
mon instrument to measure such support. The paper
discusses the development of one such instrument.
Information & Management 33 (1998) 241±250
*Corresponding author.
0378-7206/98/$19.00 # 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved
PII : S-0378-7206(98)00030-5