Phases of Research Example #4

Phases of Research: Example #4
Can College Instructors Influence
Evaluations by Students?

Idea-Generating Phase:

Most colleges and universities have procedures for undergraduates to evaluate the classroom performance of their instructors. It is not unusual to find these evaluations used in course-choice decisions by students and in faculty promotion decisions. Are these evaluations objective, or can students be easily influenced?

Problem-Definition Phase:

The researcher speculated that students generally expect to receive high grades. Some students do receive high grades, and their expectations are thus fulfilled. Other students actually receive low grades, and their expectations are unfulfilled. It was hypothesized that "fulfilled" students will give more positive instructor ratings on the posttest evaluations than will the "unfulfilled" students.

Procedures-Design Phase:

The procedure will be carried out in two large introductory Social Psychology classes taught by the same instructor. The same multiple-choice teacher-evaluation form was administered twice in each class; (1) immediately before the mid-term examination (the pretest) and (2) immediately after the students received their midterm exam grade (the posttest). At the pretest the students were also asked what grade they expected to receive. The students' expected and actual grades will be compared to determine if each student is "fulfilled" or "unfulfilled."

Statistical analysis will be carried out to see if students' evaluations of the instructor changed after receiving the grades, and if being "fulfilled" or "unfulfilled" influenced their teacher evaluations. It was hypothesized that those students whose expectations were fulfilled, compared with those whose expectations were not fulfilled, will give higher evaluations on the second administration of the teacher rating form.

Observation Phase:

Teacher-evaluation data were gathered in the two classes, immediately prior to the midterm exam and immediately after receiving their midterm exam grades. Students' expected grades were determined at the pretest evaluation.

Data Analysis Phase:

The statistical analyses (1) compared the pretest and the posttest scores on the teacher evaluation forms, and (2) carried out correlational analyses on the relationship between the pretest and the posttest teacher evaluations, and the students' status as "fulfilled" or "unfulfilled."

Interpretation Phase:

Overall, the teacher evaluations decreased significantly from the first to the second evaluation. The decrease in instructor evaluation was due to whether the students' grade expectations had been fulfilled or not. That is, those who expected high grades and received high grades (fulfilled) gave positive teacher evaluations at both pretest and posttest evaluations. Those who expected high grades, but received low grades (unfulfilled), gave much lower evaluations the second time.

As expected, there was a relationship between the exam grade expected, the exam grade received, and students' evaluations of the instructor. This was interpreted by the researcher as suggesting that students were influenced in their evaluations of the instructor by the grades they had received. The researcher concluded that college instructors can improve their standing, as measured by student evaluations, by assigning high grades to more students.

As this researcher points out in her interpretation section, and as will be discussed more fully later in this text, the pre-post procedure is a weak research design, although it does provide some tentative information.

Communication Phase:

The details are communicated through the journal article:

Tang, S. (1999). Student evaluations of teachers: Effects of grading at college levels. Journal of Research and Development in Education, 32, 83-88.