I am looking for rigorous, empirical, and preferably but not necessarily peer-reviewed research on the relationship between faculty absences and student evaluations of teaching.
Background: Teachers occasionally have to be absent from their classes. This is sometimes for work-related reasons (e.g., travel to a conference) and sometimes for personal reasons (e.g., illness or family emergency). Usually this entails finding a substitute or canceling a class.
I am interested in any statistical information on questions like the following:
- Does the number of faculty absences correlate clearly with numerical student evaluations?
- Are faculty absences particularly noted on narrative student evaluations?
I am particularly interested in these questions at the university level, but would be happy to hear information about other levels. Of course, I do not know if such research has been done, and perhaps it has not. In that case, pointers to similar research would be helpful.
I am not particularly interested in anecdotes ("One semester I was absent twelve times and my evaluations were great!") or in data-free theorizing ("Of course there will be/won't be a correlation...").
