14.4: Teacher Ratings
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Learning Objectives
Annette Towler and Robert Dipboye
Emily Zitek
How powerful are rumors? Frequently, students ask friends and/or look at instructor evaluations to decide if a class is worth taking. Kelley (1950) found that instructor reputation has a profound impact on actual teaching ratings, and Towler and Dipboye (1998) replicated and extended this study.
Subjects were randomly assigned to one of two conditions. Before viewing the lecture, students were given a summary of the instructors' prior teaching evaluations. There were two conditions: Charismatic instructor and Punitive instructor.
Then all subjects watched the same twenty-minute lecture given by the exact same lecturer. Following the lecture, subjects answered three questions about the leadership qualities of the lecturer. A summary rating score was computed and used as the variable "rating" here.
Does an instructor's prior reputation affect student ratings?
The data presented here are part of a larger study. See the references below to learn more.
Variable | Description |
Condition | this represents the content of the description that the students were given about the professor (1 = charismatic, 2 = punitive) |
Rating | how favorably the subjects rated the professor after hearing the lecture (higher ratings are more favorable) |
Ratings.xls