Research productivity and student evaluation of teaching in social science classes: A research note

Research on the relationship between research productivity and student evaluations of teaching (SETs) has been marked by several shortcomings. First, research typically fails to check and adjust for nonlinear distributions in research productivity. Since approximately 15% of researchers account for most articles and citations (e.g., Zuckerman, H., Handbook of Sociology, Sage Publications, Newbury Park, CA, pp. 511-574, 1988), this failure might explain weak or nonsignificant findings in some of the past research. Second, the unit of analysis is typically the instructor, not the class. Since top researchers might disproportionately teach small classes at the graduate level, and that SETs are usually higher in such classes, the small relationships between research excellence and SETS found in previous research may be spurious. The present study corrects for each of these issues. It analyzes data from 167 classes in the social sciences and on 65 faculty. The quality of research productivity (raw citations/post-PhD year) is not related to SETs. However, when the distribution of citations is corrected for skewness, a significant positive relationship between research productivity and SETs emerges. This relationship survives controls for course and instructor characteristics, and holds for both the faculty member and the class as units of analysis. This is the first systematic investigation to demonstrate a significant relationship between the quality of research (citations) and SETs.