Assessing the Quantity of Information in SROIs by Major

In this paper, we demonstrate how to identify whether different groups of students (classified by their major) provide different quantities of information in their student ratings of instruction (SROIs). As a corollary, we identified specific groups of students who provided a greater/lesser quantity of information in their responses. All calculations were undertaken using Microsoft Excel, and no prior statistical training was required to create or interpret our information measures. We used SROI data taken from a first-year logical reasoning course for health professions majors and found that the quantity of information provided by pharmacy and other health majors in their SROIs exceeded the quantity of information provided by nursing majors for every single SROI question. We also found that specific majors gave relatively greater quantities of information (relative to other majors) for specific types of SROI items.