Faculty Publications

The Student Evaluation Of Teaching And Likability: What The Evaluations Actually Measure

Document Type

Article

Keywords

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

Journal/Book/Conference Title

Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education

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.

Department

Department of Marketing

Original Publication Date

1-1-2021

DOI of published version

10.1080/02602938.2021.1909702

Repository

UNI ScholarWorks, Rod Library, University of Northern Iowa

Language

en

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