Deciphering Student Evaluations of Teaching: A Factor Analysis Approach

The author examined the student evaluation of teaching instrument used in the College of Business Administration at Georgia Southern University (GSU) to determine which traits have the greatest impact on students' overall rating of all individual instructors. Using exploratory factor analysis, the author found that the overall instructor rating is primarily driven by the quality of instruction. Although the results of this research apply specifically to the survey instrument used at GSU, these techniques can be applied to evaluate the instructor rating instruments at other institutions.