The Impact of Educational Inspection Activities on the Self-Assessment Outcomes of Higher Education Institutions

This article proposes and validates a conceptual model explaining how internal and external inspection/review activities influence the self-assessment outcomes of higher education institutions. Drawing on recent scholarly syntheses on inspection, accreditation, and quality assurance (QA) in higher education, we conceptualize inspection activities across seven dimensions (frequency and coverage; quality of feedback; competence of inspection teams; fairness and transparency; data–ICT utilization; postreview improvement support; and faculty participation). Self-assessment outcomes are operationalized through three result domains (quality of the self-assessment report; level of evidence/criteria completion; and degree of improvement following self-assessment), with the maturity of quality culture/IQA functioning as a moderating variable. The article proposes a mixed-methods design (PLS-SEM survey combined with semi-structured interviews) and develops a set of hypotheses. The study offers three principal contributions: (i) integrating an inspection perspective into a learning-oriented QA framework; (ii) clarifying the mediating role of feedback and the moderating role of quality culture; and (iii) providing policy recommendations to align inspection processes with the PDCA cycle of IQA and the ESG 2015 standards. The theoretical foundation is informed by Scopusindexed publications on inspection effectiveness, the “3P” IQA model, and bibliometric analyses of QA in higher education.