The reliability of medical student ratings of clinical teaching

This study estimated the interrater reliability of medical student evaluations of clinical teaching. Data consisted of 1,570 ratings evaluating 147 faculty over a 4-year period in a 3rd-year internal medicine clerkship. The number of ratings a typical faculty member receives in a year was also calculated and used to extrapolate the standard error of measurement for data typically available to evaluate faculty at different time intervals. The data available to evaluate a faculty member after 1 year was not adequate, but improved substantially at the 5- to 7-year mark, when a faculty member is typically evaluated for promotion and tenure.