A Bayesian longitudinal model for quantifying students’ preferences regarding teaching quality indicators

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to estimate the posterior mean values and analyze the posterior variation in students’ prioritization of teaching quality components within a 10-year frame. The results are based on longitudinal data gathered among Greek university students during the period of the national economic crisis in Greece spanned from 2009 to 2018. The analysis consists of fitting a Bayesian hierarchical beta regression model with a Dirichlet prior on the model coefficients that correspond to twenty quality attribute measures. Using this natural way to implement the usual constraints, the model coefficients can be interpreted as weights and thus they measure the relative importance that the students give to the different attributes. By estimating the posterior means and positioning measures of all consecutive sampling instances and summarizing posterior distributions of the differences between consecutive periods in the model weights, the study identifies and evaluates the major changes and patterns in students’ perception of academic quality over the ten-year sampling period.