What bias is present in evaluations?
There are a few different types of bias. The easiest to control is bias in administration procedures. This bias is seen most easily in SETs. For example, de-anonymizing SETs or having the instructor present during administration of the SETs both lead to artificial inflation in ratings. For example, Youmans and Jee (2007) found that offering chocolate to students led to an increase in evaluation scores. To best control this form of bias, departments should create a standardized method of administering SETs, and in conducting instructor evaluations in general.
Another form of bias is implicit bias, for example gender and race bias. Regarding gender bias, there is little agreement in results. Studies that have falsified instructor gender or created fictitious instructor profiles have found significant differences in ratings based on gender (MacNell, Driscoll, & Hunt; 2015), while others that have studied real SETs have found no significant difference (Feldman, 1993). The discrepancies in researchers’ conclusions may be due to variation in bias across fields/disciplines and other contextual factors.
Bias exists in SETs between disciplines, with ratings significantly lower for STEM/quantitative disciplines than non-STEM/non-quantitative disciplines. For a review of the effects of instructor gender and discipline on student ratings, see IDEA Research Report #10 (Li & Benton 2017).