Shaylene Stone (Uni Sunshine Coast) and colleagues surveyed academics at 41 Australian universities about the impact of teaching evals.
The survey used a custom Health and Wellbeing Scale and a Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale.
- Demographic factors were not “significant predictors” of depression but high scores on qualitative evals were
- Anxiety was related to higher qualitative scores, more so among females
- Same for stress.
Overall, Stone and colleagues found a statistically significant difference on impacts for the Health-Wellbeing Scale and depression measures, but the magnitude was modest.
“The present results suggest that quantitative measures, which are often perceived as more neutral or objective, may exert a greater negative influence on wellbeing than previously recognised,” the authors write.
“Both forms of SET may reflect a shared underlying experience of evaluative pressure that are associated with adverse impacts on academic staff, warranting further consideration in policy and practice.”
But they have different impacts. Quantitative SET, “may reflect a more chronic and system-level demand on academic staff, particularly given their role in promotion, performance metrics, and institutional benchmarking.” While critical student comments, “may be more readily internalised, thereby exerting a stronger influence on psychological outcomes.”
One of their takeouts is: “ As there is no standardised SET procedure for Australian universities, investigations of the benefits posed by lessening the intensity of SET as a job demand and decreasing the level of influence SET pose for academics in professional implications is a significant area of interest.”
Or, as Troy Heffernan (then at La Trobe U) found when he surveyed staff about anonymous student abuse in teaching evals; “every teaching period where SETs and student comments are collected, is another teaching period where the sector is effectively condoning the abuse of its marginalised academics.”