The validity of student evaluation of teaching: Is there gender bias?

Abstract

Student evaluation of teaching (SET) has steadily, but surely, become an important assessment tool in higher education. Although SET provides feedback on students’ level of satisfaction with the course and the lecturer, the validity of its results has been questioned. After extensive studies, the factor which is believed to distort the SET results is gender of the lecturer. In this paper, Potthoff analysis is employed to additionally explore whether there is gender bias in SET. Namely, this analysis has been used with great success to compare linear regression models between groups. Herein, we aimed to model the overall lecturer impression with independent variables related to teaching, communication skills, and grading and compare the models between genders. The obtained results reveal that gender bias exists in certain cases in the observed SET. We believe that our research might provide additional insights on the interesting topic of gender bias in SET.