The Validity of Student Evaluation of Teaching: Is There a Gender Bias?

Abstract

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