An Elephant in the Room: Bias in Evaluating a Required Quantitative Methods Course

Autor:	Joseph F. Fletcher, Michael Painter-Main
Rok vydání:	2014
Předmět:	Medical education Enthusiasm Sociology and Political Science media_common.quotation_subject Research methodology Education Learning experience Global Rating Course evaluation Quantitative research ComputingMilieux_COMPUTERSANDEDUCATION Statistical analysis Psychology Social psychology media_common
Zdroj:	Journal of Political Science Education. 10:121-135
ISSN:	1551-2177 1551-2169
DOI:	10.1080/15512169.2014.894350
Popis:	Undergraduate Political Science programs often require students to take a quantitative research methods course. Such courses are typically among the most poorly rated. This can be due, in part, to the way in which courses are evaluated. Students are generally asked to provide an overall rating, which, in turn, is widely used by students, faculty, and administrators to assess a course. Unfortunately, even questions composed with the best of intentions have the potential to bias the results. In this article, we evaluate the global rating question used at our university and show that it introduces bias into the measure by cuing extraneous considerations. It artificially inflates the number of negative reactions to the course by leading students to think about its required status and their initial level of enthusiasm rather than their level of accomplishment and its value as a learning experience. By locating our results in the course evaluation and framing literature, we suggest an approach to evaluating ove...
Databáze:	OpenAIRE
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