The reliability of post graduate student's ratings for faculty evaluation in Shahid Beheshti Dental School in academic year of 2009-2010

Evaluating of academic members on students assessment is a common kind of educational evaluation in most countries & also in Iran. Since recognition of the strengths and weaknesses of this evaluation method has important role in educational promotion, the present study was designed to assess the reliability of post graduate students’ in faculty evaluation. All of 70 post graduate students entered the present descriptive study. The faculty evaluation questionnaire, which is routinely used in dental school, consisted of 10 questions with 4 point Likert scale was completed twice by students with one week interval. For intraobserver reliability determination, Weighted kappa and to determine interobserver reliability, generalized Weighted kappa were used. The reliability of total students in all fields was assessed using intra class coefficient. The data were analyzed through SPSS software 11.5. Reliability of students in different departments showed no significant statistical difference (p=0.569). The mean intraobserver reliability was 0.414 & the mean interobserver reliability was 0.297. The results showed that intraobserver reliability in cases were the initial score was best or worst was significantly higher than the cases were the initial score was good or moderate (p=0.034). The highest intraobserver reliability was in the field of “creating motivation for further study & research” and the lowest reliability belonged to the field of “tolerance to critics & suggestions”. The results of this study showed that the reliability of post graduate students’ ratings for faculty evaluation was not high