Beyond the ratings: gender effects in written comments from clinical teaching assessments

Assessment of clinical teachers by learners is problematic. Construct-irrelevant factors influence ratings, and women teachers often receive lower ratings than men. However, most studies focus only on numeric scores. Therefore, the authors analyzed written comments on 4032 teacher assessments, representing 282 women and 448 men teachers in one Department of Medicine, to explore for gender differences. NVivo was used to search for 61 evidence- and theoretically-based terms purported to reflect teaching excellence, which were analyzed using 2 × 2 chi-squared tests. The Linguistic Index and Word Count (LIWC) was used to categorize comment data, which were analyzed using linear regressions. The only significant difference in NVivo was that men were more likely than women to have the word “available” in a comment (OR 1.4, p < .05). A subset of LIWC variables showed significant gender differences, but all effects were modest. Men teachers had more positive emotion words written about them, while negative emotion words appeared equally. Significant differences occurred more often between the men and women residents who wrote the comments, rather than those attributed to the gender of the teachers. For example, women residents used more social and gender-related words (β 1.87, p < 0.001) and fewer words related to power or achievement (β −3.78, p < 0.001) than men residents. Profound gender differences were not found in teacher assessment comments in this large, diverse academic department of medicine, which differs from other studies. The authors explore possible reasons including differences in departmental culture and issues related to the methods used.