Accounting for exogenous influences in performance evaluations of teachers

Students’ evaluations of teacher performance (SETs) are increasingly used by universities. However, SETs are controversial mainly due to two issues: (1) teachers value various aspects of excellent teaching differently, and (2) SETs should not be determined on exogenous influences. Therefore, this paper constructs SETs using a tailored version of the non-parametric Data Envelopment Analysis approach. In particular, we account for different values and interpretations that teachers attach to ‘good teaching’. Moreover, we reduce the impact of measurement errors and a-typical observations, and account explicitly for heterogeneous background characteristics arising from teacher, student and course characteristics.

Research highlights
► Student evaluations of teaching (SETs) should be determined by the teacher's actual performance controlled for background influences.
► The non-parametric Benefit of the Doubt (BoD) model can be used to construct multidimensional SET-scores.
► BoD can correct SET-scores for the impact of background variables.
► BoD can be used to analyze the correlation of these variables with the SET-scores.