Measuring gender bias in student satisfaction in higher education: a cross-department study

Student satisfaction surveys are widely accepted for measuring the quality of students’ overall experience with the received teaching and informing the design of improvements in higher education. However, several studies have shown that these surveys have biases that may lead to discrimination or unfair decisions against female academics. Yet it is unclear how these undesirable factors are evolving with time or to what extent they are present in different contexts. In this study, we investigate survey results from a large University in Spain for two academic years, 2021–2022 and 2022–2023. Our analysis examines these gender biases by evaluating the influencing factors from the perspective of professors and students at the level of the entire university and individual centers. The results obtained using this approach provide multifaceted evidence of gender bias disadvantaging women, especially in some academic disciplines, and that is particularly noticeable in the extremes of student satisfaction distributions.

学生满意度调查已被广泛用于衡量学生对所接受教学的整体体验质量，并为高等教育的教学改进设计提供决策支撑。然而，多项研究表明，此类调查存在偏倚，可能引发针对女性学者的歧视或不公平决策。但目前学界尚不明确这些不利因素随时间的演变趋势，也不清楚其在不同办学场景中的普遍程度。本研究针对西班牙某大型高校2021-2022学年与2022-2023学年的学生满意度调查结果展开分析，从全校及各二级单位层面，分别以教师与学生为视角评估相关影响因素，以此对这类性别偏倚进行剖析。本研究通过该方法得到的结果，从多维度证实了性别偏倚对女性学者的不利影响，尤其在部分学科领域中更为显著，且在学生满意度分布的极端区间内尤为突出。