Focus on the distribution of responses. These show you the proportion of your students that marked each response category and the pattern can be quite telling. However, if responses are strongly divided between high and low ratings or dispersed evenly across the entire response scale then students vary in how they evaluate the instructor or the course on that item. These types of results might also indicate that the instructor is better at dealing with some types of students than with others in this particular class. It is important to determine whether the mean for an item is a good indicator of general student opinion.
Students tend to rate instructors favorably.
This produces a skew toward the high end of the scale, or asymmetry, in the otherwise bell-shaped curve of instructor ratings. Should you compare your results to those of other faculty members in your department, do not over-interpret small differences between mean scores. A faculty member who receives a mean rating of 3.16 is not a significantly better teacher than one who received a mean rating of 3.08. What your results say about your strengths and areas for possible improvement. What follows is a description of these two types of questions, how they should be used, and the concepts underlying the individual questions.