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  • Item type:Publication,
    Bias in Student Evaluations of Surgical Attendings: Role of Gender, Race, Age and Experience Open PDF 
    (Elsevier BV, 2026-06)
    Theis, Claudia
    ;
    Jacob, Anusha S.
    ;
    Kapadia, Muneera Rehana
    ;
    Pascarella, Luigi
    Introduction Student evaluations influence faculty promotion but may reflect implicit bias. We assessed whether surgeon gender, race, age, and experience were associated with differences in student evaluations at a large academic medical center. Materials and methods This retrospective cohort study included 149 surgical attendings evaluated by medical students at the University of North Carolina between 2016 and 2020. Quantitative evaluation items were rated on 5-point Likert scales and analyzed using surgeon-level summary comparisons (Wilcoxon rank-sum and Kruskal–Wallis tests), evaluation-level multivariable logistic regression, and generalized estimating equations (GEEs) to account for clustering of multiple evaluations per attending. Qualitative free-text comments were analyzed using a validated natural language processing framework and summarized on a 5-point sentiment scale. Results A total of 149 surgical attendings were evaluated, including 39 women (26.2%) and 110 men (73.8%). The racial and ethnic distribution was 102 White (68.5%), 28 Asian (18.8%), 13 Black (8.7%), and 6 Latino (4.0%). In total, 2475 quantitative evaluations were analyzed, of which 1542 (62.3%) included narrative comments. The median time in practice was 14 y (Q1-Q3: 9-22), and the median time at the University of North Carolina was 11 y (Q1-Q3: 7-19.5). Median composite quantitative evaluation scores were lower for women than for men (4.42 [4.32-4.61] versus 4.61 [4.40-4.82] on a 5-point scale; P = 0.002). In GEE models accounting for clustering of evaluations within attendings and adjusting for age, race/ethnicity, and years in practice, women remained independently associated with lower evaluation scores (β = −0.206; 95% confidence interval: −0.294 to −0.118; P < 0.001). Composite evaluation scores did not differ significantly across racial or ethnic groups (Kruskal–Wallis P = 0.40), and race was not a significant predictor in adjusted models (GEE P = 0.13). Attendings aged ≥50 y had lower unadjusted evaluation scores than younger colleagues (P = 0.03); however, age was not independently associated with evaluation scores after clustering adjustment (GEE P = 0.14). Qualitative sentiment scores were uniformly high (median 4.0 [Q1-Q3: 4.0-4.5]) and did not differ by gender, race, or age. Conclusions Women surgeons received lower quantitative scores than their male colleagues, despite similarly positive qualitative feedback. Age differences were observed in unadjusted analyses but were attenuated after accounting for clustering, whereas no significant differences were observed by race or years in practice. Although absolute score differences were modest, these findings suggest that commonly used student evaluation metrics may reflect gender-related bias and should be interpreted cautiously in academic surgical assessment.
  • Item type:Publication,
    Gendered knowledge in fields and academic careers Open PDF 
    (2022)
    Kim, Lanu
    ;
    Smith, Daniel Scott
    ;
    Hofstra, Bas
    ;
    McFarland, Daniel A.
    Women and men often contribute differently to research knowledge. Do differences in these contributions partially explain disparities in academic career outcomes? We explore this by looking at how gender is embodied in research language, and then ascertain whether the adoption of more gendered research language affects career outcomes beyond the researcher's attributes. We identify different forms of gendered knowledge—gender referents (explicit references to sex and gender) and gender-associated terms (words that are implicitly associated with women or men researchers)—by applying natural language processing techniques to nearly one million doctoral dissertations published in the United States between 1980 and 2010. We then determine whether employing gender referents and gender-associated terms affects the course of PhDs’ ensuing careers. We find women researchers have lower chances of securing academic positions than men in every field; explicit references to women as research subjects are modestly rewarded in comparison to references to men; and more career opportunities are afforded to research knowledge associated with men. These results suggest that academia is slowly correcting the traditional and explicit bias of studying men at the exclusion of women. Still, there remains a stronger implicit bias against knowledge associated with women scholars. We discuss relative differences between humanities and social sciences versus natural sciences, technology, engineering, and math, as well as potential treatments for offsetting bias in those fields.