Using student evaluation of teaching in administrative control: The validity problem

Abstract

Many, if not most, business schools rely on student evaluation of teaching (SET) for at least one measure of teaching effectiveness. The accounting education literature seems not to have critically distinguished the purposes of SET, and at least one recent article (Hooper & Page, 1986) appears to accept the conclusion that these evaluations are both reliable and valid for use in administrative decisions (merit, tenure, and promotion). This article partially dissents from that position and examines the validity problems of these instruments as measured by the relationship between SET results and learning, which should be the most critical consideration. The relative ease with which SET are obtained, and their quantitative nature, result in a greater tendency to rely on them, often to the exclusion of other measures of teaching effectiveness. While SET can provide an input to managerial control decisions concerned with teaching effectiveness, undue reliance on them has the potential for serious dysfunctional effects.