The Validity of Students’ Evaluations: Classroom Evaluations of Instructors Independently Nominated As Best and Worst Teachers by Graduating Seniors

Abstract

Graduating seniors nominated instructors in their major departments who were “most outstanding” or “least outstanding.” The following academic year, evaluations of 62 instructors, 31 “most outstanding” and 31 “least outstanding,” were selected from all courses evaluated as part of a university-wide program of instructional evaluation. Although retrospective nominations of graduating seniors were experimentally independent and differed in nature from the classroom evaluations of current students, the nominations showed good correspondence with the classroom evaluations. The classroom evaluations of the “most outstanding” instructors were consistently much higher than those of the “least outstanding” instructors on all evaluation scores except the “Difficulty/Workload” factor. However, the lack of statistically significant differences on the background variables describing the course, the student and the instructor’s teaching experience suggests that the two criterion groups were similar in other aspects. These findings offer support for the validity of students’ evaluations of instructional effectiveness by showing that the distinction between instructors nominated “most outstanding” and “least outstanding” by graduating seniors is reflected in their classroom evaluations.