Quantifying halo effects in students' evaluation of teaching

Student evaluations of teaching may be subject to halo effects, where answers to one question are contaminated by answers to the other questions. Quantifying halo effects is difficult since correlation between answers may be due to underlying correlation of the items being tested. We use a novel ide...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Assessment and evaluation in higher education 2022-01, Vol.47 (1), p.1-14
Main Authors: Cannon, Edmund, Cipriani, Giam Pietro
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bias
block rating
Class Size
Classrooms
Foreign Countries
Graduate Students
halo effects
Higher education
lecture-room capacity
Questions
Response Style (Tests)
Student Evaluation of Teacher Performance
students' evaluation of teaching
Teacher evaluations
Undergraduate Students
validity
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Summary:Student evaluations of teaching may be subject to halo effects, where answers to one question are contaminated by answers to the other questions. Quantifying halo effects is difficult since correlation between answers may be due to underlying correlation of the items being tested. We use a novel identification procedure to test for a halo effect by combining a question on lecture-room capacity with objective information on the size of the lecture room. We confirm the presence of halo effects but show that the responses to the contaminated question remain informative. This suggests that the distortion in the evaluation questionnaires caused by halo effects need not be a concern for higher education institutions.
ISSN:0260-2938
1469-297X
DOI:10.1080/02602938.2021.1888868