Gender and cultural bias in student evaluations: Why representation matters.

Gendered and racial inequalities persist in even the most progressive of workplaces. There is increasing evidence to suggest that all aspects of employment, from hiring to performance evaluation to promotion, are affected by gender and cultural background. In higher education, bias in performance evaluation has been posited as one of the reasons why few women make it to the upper echelons of the academic hierarchy. With unprecedented access to institution-wide student survey data from a large public university in Australia, we investigated the role of conscious or unconscious bias in terms of gender and cultural background. We found potential bias against women and teachers with non-English speaking backgrounds. Our findings suggest that bias may decrease with better representation of minority groups in the university workforce. Our findings have implications for society beyond the academy, as over 40% of the Australian population now go to university, and graduates may carry these biases with them into the workforce.

Palliative radiation for stage 3 non-small cell lung cancer--a prospective study of two moderately high dose regimens.

Eighty four patients from Groote Schuur Hospital and Frere Hospital East London were entered into a prospective randomised trial between January 1990 and December 1993. All the patients possessed non-small cell carcinoma (NSCLC) of the lung too extensive for radical irradiation and World Health Organization performance status 0-2. The patients were randomised to receive either 35 Gy in 10 fractions (43 patients) or 45 Gy in 15 fractions (41 patients). In the patients treated to 35 Gy and 45 Gy, the median survival was 8.5 months in both groups, the symptomatic response rate was 68% and 76% and the incidence of moderate to severe radiation oesophagitis was 23% and 41% respectively. The latter approached statistical significance (P = 0.07, chi square). There was no evidence of a dose response effect on survival in the moderate dose range in patients treated palliatively for locally advanced NSCLC.