Biases in student evaluations of teaching: An exploratory analysis to a Chinese case study

ABSTRACT

This paper examines factors influencing on student evaluations of teaching (SET) with consideration of disciplinary variations. Data were obtained from a university in Guangzhou of China and consisted of 1443 undergraduate course ratings collected from 19 schools over two semesters. The students and courses are classified into hard and soft disciplinary groupings and divided into four sub-groups for further comparison. The result of the ANOVA test showed significant difference in the mean SET scores across four subgroups; and results of linear models reflect students who major in hard discipline tend to give higher SET scores regardless of the course’s feature. In addition, there was also evidence of possible biases in the ratings according to the features of teachers, students and courses. Overall, the disciplinary differences would need to be considered when decisions are being made on the basis of the SET scores, especially for cross-school evaluation.

KEYWORDS:

• Student evaluations of teaching
• major
• course
• ANOVA

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yi Yu

Yi Yu is a supervisor in Academic Affairs Office at Guangdong University of Technology. She has nearly 12 years of experience in teaching management practice, including work as teaching administrator and in a role in quality control. Her research focuses on teaching evaluation, especially student evaluations of teaching in the context of technology university.

Yuanyuan Lin

Yuanyuan Lin is a postgraduate student in School of Economics at Jinan University. She received her BS in economic statistics from Jinan University. Her research interests revolve around mathematical statistics, education statistics.

Jun Qi

Jun Qi is an associate professor in the School of Management at Jinan University. Her research focus on teaching quality assurance, teaching methods, and business education management.

Haibo Yan

Haibo Yan is an associate research fellow in Academic Affairs Office at Jinan University, having total 13 years of teaching management research experience. His research interests include the teaching evaluation and curriculum development.