Racial/ethnic and national origin bias in SET

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to test the presence of an adverse impact against professors belonging to minority groups (African American, Asian American, Hispanic American and foreign national origin) in official student evaluation of teaching (SET).

Design/methodology/approach

The authors conducted a series of regression analyses to compare SET rating sources and control for course difficulty.

Findings

The regression analysis results showed that White American professors receive higher SET ratings than non-White American and foreign professors, which implies the presence of bias in SET.

Originality/value

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to examine race/ethnicity and national origin bias in SET using official SET results from multiple universities.

Citation

Wang, L. and Gonzalez, J.A. (2020), "Racial/ethnic and national origin bias in SET", International Journal of Organizational Analysis, Vol. 28 No. 4, pp. 843-855. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJOA-06-2019-1793