Abstract
This paper presents the results of a field experiment designed to reduce gender discrimination in student evaluations of teaching (SET). In the first intervention, students receive a normative statement reminding them that they should not discriminate in SETs. In the second intervention, the normative statement includes precise information about how other students (especially male students) have discriminated against female teachers in previous years. The purely normative statement has no significant impact on SET overall satisfaction scores, suggesting that a blanket awareness-raising campaign may be inefficient to reduce discrimination. However, the informational statement appears to significantly reduce gender discrimination. The effect we find mainly comes from a change in male students’ evaluation of female teachers.
Highlights
Anti-bias awareness-raising campaigns are a common strategy that organizations use to reduce discrimination in the evaluations of employees and job candidates
This paper provides the result of a field experiment designed to test the impact of two types of awareness-raising campaigns—one with information to generate bias awareness, and one without—in the context of gender discrimination in student evaluations of
In a recent lab experiment, Mengel (2020) tests an intervention similar to ours in the context of committee deliberations, and finds that providing information on biases can be effective. These results suggest that real life interventions, such as informing committee members conducting interviews for European Research Council (ERC) grants about gender biases in recruitment committee decisions,1 may effectively reduce discrimination
Summary
Anti-bias awareness-raising campaigns are a common strategy that organizations use to reduce discrimination in the evaluations of employees and job candidates. This paper provides the result of a field experiment designed to test the impact of two types of awareness-raising campaigns—one with information to generate bias awareness, and one without—in the context of gender discrimination in student evaluations of. Information gathering (learning) following the informational treatment could explain our results We believe that these discussions probably contributed to making this treatment effective, whereas students in the other treated campuses are likely to have largely ignored the purely normative message. We test the effect of providing norms, with and without information, in a context where student behavior remains private information, limiting the potential impact of a Hawthorne effect Students complete their SETs online anonymously, excluding public scrutiny of their behavior as a possible mechanism to explain these results.
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