| The wide use of student ratings has become a regular part of faculty life in institutions of higher education. The expansion of this type of rating system over the last quarter of the Twentieth Century has been coupled with an increasing reliance on student ratings as a mandatory element in instructor evaluation, and as a partial basis for granting of tenure and raises. As a result, the reliability and validity of student ratings of instruction (SRIs) has been questioned and examined from a number of perspectives. This study examines the possible association of ratings with (a) academic field, (b) whether a course is required or elective, (c) class size, and (d) the number of course prerequisites. The study is in response to a call by Cashin (1990) for institutions to examine such factors at their own institutions.; Student ratings data were collected from the University of San Francisco (Schools of Business, Nursing, and the College of Arts and Sciences) for the period from Spring Semester, 1990 through Fall Semester, 1993. A total of 12,256 student ratings forms were processed for this study. The data was summarized and compared using nonparametric techniques to compare median ratings assigned by students to instructors, controlling for the variables indicated above.; The findings suggest that ratings do differ based on the four types of groupings listed above. Least favorable ratings were assigned to the instructors of natural science courses, those with no prerequisites, those that were required (vs. elective courses) and those classes that had the highest student-to-instructor ratios.; Conclusions were that it would be advisable to rotate instructors for purposes of establishing possible causal relationships, that SRIs be considered only a part of an overall teacher evaluation system, and that factors such as those identified in the study be taken into consideration when interpreting findings. |
