To investigate how postgraduate students think that the quality of their teaching is affected when those who lecture to them are active researchers.
Many academics believe doing research improves their teaching.
Universities often use evidence of research excellence to employ or promote staff on teaching contracts. Some studies have reported a negative relationship between lecturer research activity and teaching quality. The usual evidence is a negative correlation between amount of lecturer research with student ratings of teaching quality. Their conclusion was that research activity didn't make teaching worse, but it didn't make it better either. If lecturer research doesn't enhance teaching quality, or worse still, if it actually affects teaching negatively, universities might reasonably want lecturers to do less research and more teaching.