The Influence of Student Sex and Instructor Sex on Student Ratings of Instructors: Results from a College of Communication

Abstract

It is important to determine if student ratings of instructors reflect systematic bias due to sex of instructor. We posed research questions as to whether male and female students would rate male or female instructors more highly on five dimensions of student rating forms, one of which was instructor interaction. Results indicated that male and female students rated female instructors more highly on all five dimensions. The effect sizes of these results were extremely small, but significant due to the large sample size (almost 12,000). These findings suggest that administrators should not assume one sex to provide better or poorer instruction, and they should reward instructors on the basis of individual course performance rather than according to instructor sex.

Keywords:

• teaching evaluations
• sex differences