Instructor's Attire As A Biasing Factor In Students' Ratings Of An Instructor

Abstract

This study examined the influence of instructor's attire on students' evaluation of their teacher. A modified posttest only control group design was used to conduct this research. The sample consisted of thirty-one undergraduate students. The data were analyzed by executing t-test and paired t-test. The study was conducted in two phases. One instructor taught two sections of the same course. For the experimental group, the instructor wore Indian/Western attire combination; for the control group the instuctor wore the Western/Western attire combination. The findings for the first phase revealed that the experimental group rated their instructor significantly lower than the control group in four of the five categories on the standard teaching evaluation instrument. The second phase results indicated that nonsignificant differences existed for the categories of global evaluation and manner of presentation. The findings confirmed that dress did have an impact on students' evaluations of their instructor.