ERIC Number: EJ1194968
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2018-Nov
Pages: 21
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1475-7257
EISSN: N/A
The Role of Clarity about Study Programme Contents and Interest in Student Evaluations of Teaching
Feistauer, Daniela; Richter, Tobias
Psychology Learning and Teaching, v17 n3 p272-292 Nov 2018
Validity is an important issue when measuring teaching quality using student evaluations. This study examined the effects of psychology students' subjective clarity about study contents and their prior interest in the subject as variables possibly biasing the evaluations of psychology courses. German students (N = 292) evaluated lectures and seminars over five years with a standardized questionnaire, yielding 3,348 data points. In cross-classified multilevel models, we separated the total variance into the variance components of course, teacher, student, and the Teacher x Student interaction and found evidence for biasing effects with regard to the students' clarity about study contents and prior subject interest. These effects were small overall and were stronger for lectures than for seminars. These results suggest that the validity of evaluations of teaching in psychology can be improved by creating realistic expectations of what psychology is about before students choose psychology as a study subject.
Descriptors: Student Evaluation of Teacher Performance, Validity, Foreign Countries, Lecture Method, Seminars, Psychology, Undergraduate Students, Course Evaluation, Bias
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Germany
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A