Mein(nach-wie-vor-schöner)Prof.de

Tobias Wolbring argues in his replica to our article Mein(schöner)Prof.de (issue 4/2009 of this journal) that the presented empirical analyses would be problematic in several respects. He claims our sample was selective, criticizes the lacking control of relevant confounding variables and our statistical model building. In this response we consider Wolbring’s criticism in detail. We believe we can prove that his points of criticism do not hold after a close investigation. In particular, we think our central substantial conclusions can be maintained.     

Mein(schöner)Prof.de

Evaluations of academic teaching have become an instrument for the quality management in universities of constantly growing importance. This process is unproblematic as long as the quality of teaching is rated validly by the evaluations of students. The validity of the rating, however, becomes questionable as an influence of the teaching staffs’ physical attractiveness on the evaluation of teaching has been proved. This effect would only be compatible with an assumed valid rating of the teaching performance if attractive teachers would in fact show a better performance in academic teaching and are not just better rated for their attractiveness. We analyzed data from the German online platform MeinProf.de for the evaluation of academic teachers. The results show that attractive teachers very probably do not perform better. The attractiveness of female teachers does not have the expected influence on the evaluation of their teaching.