Do Student Evaluations of University Reflect Inaccurate Beliefs or Actual Experience? A Relative Rank Model

Of tinfoil hats and thinking caps: Reasoning is more strongly related to implausible than plausible conspiracy beliefs

People who strongly endorse conspiracy theories typically exhibit biases in domain-general reasoning. We describe an overfitting hypothesis, according to which (a) such theories overfit conspiracy-related data at the expense of wider generalisability, and (b) reasoning biases reflect, at least in part, the need to reduce the resulting dissonance between the conspiracy theory and wider data. This hypothesis implies that reasoning biases should be more closely associated with belief in implausible conspiracy theories (e.g., the moon landing was faked) than with more plausible ones (e.g., the Russian Federation orchestrated the attack on Sergei Skripal). In two pre-registered studies, we found that endorsement of implausible conspiracy theories, but not plausible ones, was associated with reduced information sampling in an information-foraging task and with less reflective reasoning. Thus, the relationship between belief in conspiracy theories and reasoning is not homogeneous, and reasoning is not linked specifically to the "conspiracy" aspect of conspiracy theories. Instead, it may reflect an adaptive response to the tension between implausible theories and other beliefs and data.

Titrating Teaching: An Interdisciplinary Case Study of Online and Face-to-Face Undergraduate Biochemistry Instruction

Although many science education researchers have investigated developing science education at the K-12 levels to meet the needs of underrepresented students in science, far fewer have considered how shifts to online instruction in undergraduate science courses might provide insights into better supporting the achievement of students from diverse backgrounds at the university level. This case study aims to fill this gap by engaging in a reflective interdisciplinary "deep dive" into the instruction of one biochemistry professor at a designated Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI), across two distinct modalities: face-to-face and online. The findings reported here suggest that the use of formative assessments and student feedback surveys, as well as responsive instructional strategies, facilitate access to and comprehension of complex material in the online modality, without diminishing achievement. Additionally, the reflective collaboration deployed methodologically in this study highlights how higher education faculty can marshal intellectual resources across distinct disciplines to identify and develop responsive pedagogy in advanced science courses at the university level.

A 10-year case study on the changing determinants of university student satisfaction in the UK

Higher Education (HE), once the prerogative of a tiny elite, is now accessible to larger numbers of people around the world than ever before yet despite the fact that an understanding of student satisfaction has never been more important for today’s universities, the concept remains poorly understood. Here we use published data from the UK’s National Student Survey (NSS), representing data from 2.3 million full-time students collected from 2007 to 2016, as a case study of the benefits and limitations of measuring student satisfaction that might have applicability for other countries, particularly those that, like the UK, have experienced significant growth in student numbers. The analyses showed that the factor structure of the NSS remained generally stable and that the ability of the NSS to discriminate between different subjects at different universities actually improved over the ten-year sample period. The best predictors of overall satisfaction were ‘Teaching Quality’ and ‘Organisation & Management’, with ‘Assessment & Feedback’ having relatively weak predictive ability, despite the sector’s tangible efforts to improve on this metric. The tripling of student fees in 2012 for English students (but not the rest of the UK) was used as a ‘natural experiment’ to investigate the sensitivity of student satisfaction ratings to the real economic costs of HE. The tuition fee increase had no identifiable negative effect, with student satisfaction steadily improving throughout the decade. Although the NSS was never designed to measure perceived value-for-money, its insensitivity to major changes in the economic costs of HE to the individual suggest that the conventional concept of student satisfaction is incomplete. As such we propose that the concept of student satisfaction: (i) needs to be widened to take into account the broader economic benefits to the individual student by including measures of perceived value-for-money and (ii) should measure students’ level of satisfaction in the years post-graduation, by which time they may have a greater appreciation of the value of their degree in the workplace.

Being paid relatively well most of the time: Negatively skewed payments are more satisfying

How does the structure of a series of payments influence its recipient's satisfaction? A common hypothesis is that each payment will be compared with a single "standard" or "reference" payment (e.g., the average payment). Cognitive models of judgment such as range frequency theory predict in contrast that the entire payment distribution will influence evaluation of each individual payment. Two experiments examined satisfaction with a series of payments. In both experiments, most payments were either relatively high in the experienced distribution (the distribution was negatively skewed) or relatively low (positively skewed). The total and average payment was held constant. Experiment 1 found that average satisfaction with individual payments was higher when the payments were negatively skewed, consistent with range frequency theory, and earlier findings were extended by comparing range frequency theory with a range-based model, a rank-based model, and a reference point model at the individual level. Experiment 2 examined satisfaction with whole sequences of payments and found that receiving a negatively skewed sequence was more satisfying overall than receiving a positively skewed sequence. It is concluded that negatively skewed payment distributions are more satisfying, as predicted by cognitive models of judgment.

Does income relate to health due to psychosocial or material factors? Consistent support for the psychosocial hypothesis requires operationalization with income rank not the Yitzhaki Index

Research on why income influences health has produced mixed findings. Many, but not all, studies suggest that the relationship between income and health is due to income indicating psychosocial position rather than the associated material benefits. The inconsistent findings may be partly due to the use of the Yitzhaki Index, a function which calculates the accumulated income shortfall for an individual relative to those with higher income, in order to represent the psychosocial position conferred by income. The current study tests whether an alternative specification - income rank - provides more consistent conclusions regarding the psychosocial effect of income on health. We used data from two nationally representative samples: 14,224 observations from 9,404 participants across three waves (2004, 2008, and 2012) of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) and 29,237 observations from 8,441 individuals across seven waves (2007-2013) of the Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social Sciences (LISS). Multilevel regression models indicated that income rank was a stronger and more consistent predictor than both the Yitzhaki Index and actual income of self-rated and objective health. The psychosocial hypothesis is more consistently supported when income rank is used to test it.