Course Evaluations, Course Characteristics, and Professor Characteristics, Austin, Texas, Academic Years 2000-2002 (ICPSR 37647)

Version Date: May 4, 2020

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Principal Investigator(s):
Daniel S. Hamermesh, University of Texas at Austin

https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR37647.v1

Version V1

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Summary

Contains data on course evaluations, course characteristics, and professor characteristics for 463 courses for the academic years 2000-2002 at the University of Texas at Austin. The purpose of this study was to examine the productivity effects of beauty in the context of undergraduate education. In particular, researchers looked at the impact of instructors' looks on their instructional ratings in the courses that they teach.

Citation

Hamermesh, Daniel S. Course Evaluations, Course Characteristics, and Professor Characteristics, Austin, Texas, Academic Years 2000-2002. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2020-05-04. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR37647.v1

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Subject Terms

Geographic Coverage

Distributor(s)

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
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Time Period(s)

2000 -- 2002

Date of Collection

2000 -- 2002
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Study Purpose

The purpose of this study was to examine the productivity effects of beauty in the context of undergraduate education. In particular, researchers looked at the impact of instructors' looks on their instructional ratings in the courses that they teach.

Study Design

Researchers chose instructors at all levels of the academic hierarchy, obtaining instructional staffs from a number of departments that had posted all faculty members' pictures on their departmental websites. An additional ten faculty members' pictures were obtained from miscellaneous departments around the University. This sample selection criterion resulted in 463 classes, with the number of classes taught by the sample members ranging from 1 to 13. The classes ranged in size from 8 to 581 students. Underlying the 463 sample observations are 16,957 completed evaluations from 25,547 registered students. Both lower- and upper-division courses are included.

Each of the instructors' pictures was rated by each of six undergraduate students: three women and three men, with one of each genderbeing a lower division, two upper-division students (to accord with the distribution of classes across the two levels). The raters were told to use a 10 (highest) to 1 rating scale, to concentrate on the physiognomy of the instructor in the picture, to make their ratings independent of age, and to keep 5 in mind as an average.

Sample

Instructors were chosen from all levels of the academic hierarchy at the University of Texas-Austin. Four hundred and sixty three courses were included, ranging in size from 8 to 581 students, and the number of students completing the instructional ratings ranged from 5 to 380.

Universe

Sample of undergraduate courses at the University of Austin, academic years 2000-2002

Unit(s) of Observation

Courses

Data Type(s)

Description of Variables

The data includes various demographic variables such as whether a professor is a minority and their age. It also includes varaibles on the beauty ratings given to professors as well as their course evaluation ratings.

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Original Release Date

2020-05-04

Version History

2020-05-04 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

  • Created variable labels and/or value labels.

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