Reading the Individual Section Results
The evaluation results for each section are printed with the course and section number, the instructor's name, the number of students responding to the evaluation and the class enrollment as of the ninth week of classes.
Printed below this are the results to the questions on the survey. Any supplemental questions you may have included in the survey will appear on a separate page.
The numbers immediately following each question show the percentage distribution of responses. For questions 3 through 22, the possible responses ("strongly agree", "agree", etc.) are the same. Also indicated for each question is the percentage of the number responding that omitted the question or made some invalid response. The mean (average) response and standard deviation of responses are also shown.
Reading the Department and Campus Summaries
The department and campus summaries consist of one page with the name of the department (or campus summary), the total number of students responding in all sections in the department in which the evaluation was administered and the total enrollment of all such sections.
The results of the survey for these summaries are presented in the same format as the individual section results. In these summaries however, all numbers are simple averages of the corresponding values for all sections in the department completing the evaluation. Thus, for each question, the number presented for any given response is the average percentage selecting that response for the department or campus as a whole. Similarly, the mean and standard deviation are the average of these values for all sections in the department or campus.
All of these averages are computed by adding together the corresponding values for each section and then dividing by the number of sections; all sections are weighted equally, without regard to the number of students responding in each section.
It may prove useful to compare your evaluation results with those for your other sections as well as for your department as a whole. However, several factors limit the usefulness of such comparisons:
- Department totals do not include all courses, or even all teachers within a department, but only those sections in which the evaluation was administered;
- As in the case of individual course comparisons, there are many non-teacher related variables which might affect evaluation results. Although courses included in the department summary may be generally similar in content area, any particular course may differ significantly in other ways from the typical or average situation represented by the department summary.
- It should be pointed out that, for most classes, the change of a single student's response can alter percentages by several points (in very small classes, the change will be even more dramatic).
Campus-wide summaries may be used to get a very rough idea of how your individual sections and department compare to the campus average. For many of the same reasons discussed earlier, such comparisons should be used only for general interest.
Interpreting the Mean and Standard Deviation
For questions 3 through 22 the mean response shows the level of agreement (or disagreement) with the content of each question. For these questions, any mean between 1.0 and 2.5 indicates a level of agreement with the statement in the question, with the strength of agreement increasing as the value of the mean approaches to 1.0 ("strongly agree"). Any value of the mean between 2.5 and 4.0 indicates a level of disagreement, with the strength of disagreement increasing as the value of the mean gets closer to 4.0 ("strongly disagree"). At 2.5, the extent of agreement and disagreement with the question by students responding to that question is about equal. For example, a section mean of 1.5 on question 5 would indicate that the average respondent indicated something between "strong agreement" (response choice 1) and "agreement" (response choice 2) with the statement that their instructor "achieved the stated objectives of the course outline".
