What Makes a Good Criminal Justice Professor? A Quantitative Analysis of Student Evaluation Forms

The goal of this research is to understand how students define teaching effectiveness. By using multivariate regression analysis of 8,000+ student evaluations of teaching compiled by a School of Criminal Justice at a Midwestern public university, this paper explores the relationships between individual indicators of instructor performance (e.g. clarity of the instructor, concern for student progress etc.), and overall impressions of instructor quality. Further consideration is given to factors like basic student characteristics (e.g. academic status), basic course characteristics (e.g. whether the course is a research methods class), basic instructor characteristics (e.g. instructor gender), and the expected grade in the class. Results indicate that the individual instructor performance items are the most important indicators of overall perceived quality. Other factors do matter, but their influence is statistically weaker. Interestingly, once the individual instructor performance items are controlled, the effect of perceived grade is rendered statistically insignificant.