The student evaluation of teaching and likability: what the evaluations actually measure

Abstract

For several decades research into the student evaluation of teaching has periodically found an association between how well students like an instructor and the evaluations. The association has been largely ignored, being seen as an indicator of bias, or as a statistical or procedural artifact. However, these interpretations may be obscuring a more fundamental hypothesis. It is possible that the evaluations, instead of being a measure of ‘good’ or ‘effective’ teaching as commonly conceived, are actually a measure of a student-perceived construct similar to likability. This study looks directly at the influence of likability on the student evaluation of teaching. Knowing nothing about an instructor or how a class was taught, students’ perception of likability accounted for two-thirds of the total variance of the evaluations. The student evaluation of teaching could be replaced with a single likability measure, with little loss of predictability.

Keywords:

• Student evaluation of teaching
• SET
• likability
• personality
• evaluation errors
• learning

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.