The influence of student interest on teaching evaluation.

Abstract

OBJECTIVES: To analyze the influence of student subject bias on the evaluation of didactic teaching. DESIGN: Prospective study evaluating the relationship between the interest of junior students in 30 clinical topics and the students' subsequent evaluations of lecturers for these topics. SETTING: University internal medicine junior core curriculum. PARTICIPANTS: 56 junior students. Lecturers were senior internal medicine residents. INTERVENTION: None. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: There was no correlation between mean student interest scores for the topics and either immediate or end-of-rotation lecturer evaluation scores (R = -0.14 and 0.09 and p = 0.47 and 0.61, respectively). For 20 of 30 topics (66%) more than 50% of the students assigned the same level of high, intermediate, or low interest. There was no significant difference (p = 0.84) in the mean lecturer evaluation scores for these three divergent groups. Analysis of individual lecturers' evaluation scores revealed stratification to a given range independent of student interest in the topic. CONCLUSIONS: Students do not appear to be biased by their degree of interest in a subject when evaluating teaching skills. It appears unlikely that specific teaching assignments need to be considered when evaluating competence in didactic teaching.